An Eventful 19 Hours

First there was the lettuce salad at about 8 last night. Lettuce, according to Beatrix Potter, is a soporific, and I couldn't sleep the night before, so here was me, hoping (shall I compare thee to an oakleaf lettuce? thou'rt less silky, nor yet so yielding...Huh? No, I don't know). Delicious.

But at 5am lightning practically through the skylight over my bed and really good thunder made me decide to Check the Terrace, which was awash with 2" of H2O over the gravel. Fearing the worst (blocked drain, rendered inaccessible by the Construction Poles last year, therefore Flood, therefore More Workers in House), I scrambled. Ten mintes later, soaked and shivering(alas 'twas not to last, the latter), everything was draining nicely.

So. After an aborted trip to the subway where many angry and hot people were waiting for trains that never came, I hoofed it back home to the Peugeot and a dry dress (humidity, not rain, now blazing hot) and whizzed (I use the term glibly and with little regard for the labours of the Up part) over the bridge. All the lights were green, all the way. I didn't even come close to squashing a pedestrian. Message from the god.

The hottest day to day to date, this odd summer. The actual peddling is fine. It's when you stop that you discover how much of your body is made up of water. After parking my bike at work, climbing into cold water and swimming for a bit, I went back out and found a neat box with a seagull in it, in the basket! A present? A message? A sign?

So Mr Bob's daughter, Adele, who is visiting for the day, assembled Wilbur and here he is, exercising.


He did exceptionally well, including a spectacular loop de loop, until...

I was laughing too much to focus. Excellent laughing day.

So to cheer Dell up (yeah, right) and to celebrate the fact that half of New York is still stuck at home (because they are sans Peugeots!!), we went to Prune where she did what Gabrielle Hamilton intended with the horrid little canned olives that arrive with celery sticks and salt.