Thursday 9 July 2026: Too hot!

The pictures I’ve been using to illustrate the blog for the past week are pictures I’ve taken on our walk down to the meadow. Today’s picture was going to be common yarrow, but as I was editing it, I noticed this lovely little chap in the bottom left-hand corner. I didn’t even know I’d captured a butterfly, and the poet had tried a few times to get a decent picture when he came with us. Today’s image isn’t particularly sharp, but it’s a record of our lovely new area.

Wednesday we were up fairly early because the poet had to take his company car in for a service and I followed him in mine. It was the first day of the new high temperatures, but we were relieved that it didn’t seem as warm as it was supposed to. It clouded over too, which helped. We still haven’t left the puppy on his own because, well, on top of everything else, we’re now in a new house. So he had to come with me in my car and my car doesn’t have air-con at the moment.

We dropped the car off at the dealer then drove to Next to have the poet measured for the suit he’ll be wearing for his daughter’s wedding in August. We couldn’t find a single place to park in the shade so I parked as best I could and the poet went into the store to do his thang, calling me on his way in to say there were benches in the shade if I wanted to take Alfie out of a car that would be warming up.

I stayed in the car with the windows open for as long as I thought was fair, then closed it all up and went to sit on one of the benches in the shade. He wasn’t in there for very long, though, and soon we were back in the car and heading home with at least a breeze blowing in through all the windows.

We both had work to do, but during our midday break he started to jet-wash the drive, just as one of the tradesmen arrived to look over our security alarm. It’s all working properly and we know how to set it. But when the new windows and doors are being fitted, we’ll have to disconnect the wires and leave them dangling for the duration. The alarms guy new the property well as he’d installed the system and maintained it for ‘many years’.

They hadn’t heard from the previous owner since 2024, so it was down to me when I made the call to let them know he’d died in April 2025. When the guy got here, he shared a few fond memories of ‘a lovely chap’ before coming up with the above plan of action. When he comes back to reconnect the wires, we’ll discuss our future needs. He said new instals are all wi-fi now but if we can hold onto the wired system for as long as we could he believed it would be so much more reliable for many more years to come.

We had another bathroom fitter coming to give us a quote for a new bathroom, but he hadn’t given us a firm time. So I let him know we’d be here until 4pm and then we’d be going back to get the poet’s car. If that didn’t work for him, he could always rearrange.

While this was going on, I was updating today’s blog and responding to something on FB about the fiction magazine replacing its paid writers by their so-called fiction team but with assistance from AI…Well, despite the magazine’s protestations to the contrary, we all know what that means.

It’s not a magazine I was writing for, as I fell just outside of their qualifying period to be a regular writer. But if I had been one of their writers, I would have walked away years ago anyway. First of all when they made their rights grab, and then when they slashed payments by 75%. So, replacing human writers with ‘AI-assisted’ humans would also have had me running for the hills. They’re claiming they’re not using AI to write their stories, just using AI to assist their creative team. Seems they’ve completely forgotten what was used to train that AI in the first place.

However, just because I personally would have turned my back on this magazine, and others like it, a LONG time ago, it doesn’t mean I don’t feel for all those writers who stood by them through all of the above just to have this thrown in their faces now. I’ve been responding to their posts as a disappointed reader rather than a writer with a grudge, because that’s more like what I am. But it won’t surprise me if I get banned by their FB page so, of course, I’m taking screenshots.

I did have to drag myself away from it as I had work to do and tradesmen to see. But I kept half an eye on it all for the rest of the day.

On Tuesday, I’d set my desktop computer up on a pop-up table in what will be the office when all the junk is cleared. On Wednesday, I did all of my work at the desktop, both offline and online, using my phone as a hotspot for the online stuff. After only a week or so of using the laptop, it was so nice to be using my heavy duty mechanical keyboard and mouse again, although I did keep going to the space bar looking for the mouse pad!

When I set the desktop up, I couldn’t get the mouse wheel to work at first. It was a bit sticky and I started to panic, wondering where the spare might be. After a bit of a blow, though, a shake and a quick wipe, it was working again. I’m hoping it was just a fleck of something blocking the mechanism. But now, at the back of my mind, I’m thinking about buying a new mouse and hoping I can still get a wired one.

The dog didn’t get his walk until 10pm. It was far too hot to take him out before then. Today, the skip is being taken away and I have the last of the bathroom fitters coming. Temperatures are forecast up to 34℃ (96℉).

This post appears on Words Worth Writing, Medium and Patreon.