Wednesday, June 5

At 4:00 I woke with my wasp bite hurting like hell. Before I was able to get back to sleep I had to remove my duvet from its cover so that I was, in effect, lying under a sheet. The heatwave meant that I was facing the choice of sleeping under the duvet and waking up drowning in sweat, or throwing the cover off and waking it being bitten to death.

Oh the wonders of lateral thinking.

The girls had a yogurty breakfast and went off to the fields at 8:55. I had a sandwich and a cup of tea and contemplated a day without painting. Having figured out why my phone wouldn’t act as a hotspot yesterday evening, I set to work in the sauna. I rewrote my note about tetrads and mailed Alexandra to tel her it was ready. (She had been requesting a more detailed explanation for an assignment that she is doing.)

Then I started to read the final essays from the Digital Mediascapes class. The problem facing me was that sitting in the sauna house was, as the day warmed up, more or less like sitting in a sauna. I had to take walks in the fields to cool down.

Now I am looking over at the field where Camilla, Naa, Auo and Lilli are busy weeding the herbs. In fifteen minutes or so they will stop and the girls will come home.

Later, after swimming and washing in the sea, we will eat sausages and mashed potatoes. The swimming andwashing will be marred by the arrival of the algae that is increasingly common in the archipelago. Maybe the heatwave has brought it on. The girls will be reluctant to spend any time in the water, which is a shame (but possibly medically advisable).

In the evening we will get ready for our bus ride to Helsinki tomorrow morning by clearing up anything that needs clearing up, and packing anything that needs packing. No slouches us!