Heat

Huh. Red-winged blackbird in a bed of cattails. I have received differing opinions on whether cattails and bullrushes are the same thing. Moses in the cattails, hmm, doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

During the sweaty, searing heat of this afternoon, I managed to find myself, by virtue of having taken the wrong exit from Tim Horton's, on South East Marine Drive. This was a mistake I regretted for half an hour of smelly, noisy, blood-pressure raising hell. But....at least my coffee was still hot by the time I got back to work.

I walked into the kitchen.
'Janis! Can you tell us of something that works to get the attention of the children?' asked Rob who seemed to be having a meeting with his summer volunteers.
'So is this my professional opinion you want to hear based on years of secondary school teaching?' I asked,
'Yes,'
'Shout at them in German, that always works.'
Well it does! AND I was hot and bothered.

I went back to my office and hoiked out my expensive sun screen, the one which claimed it would cool me down as I applied it and I would look forward to doing so. Having purchased it, I then read the whole of the blurb on the back and it said, 'Do not smoke while using this product.'
I don't smoke, but it worried me nonetheless.
But at that point I was so hot I was indeed looking forward to applying it. And it did cool me down, yep, it lived up to its promise, for about a minute. It also made my eyes water and all the previous gunk I'd been wearing turned to nasty little grey specs. Huh.

Kris and I were putting in an appearance at an evening event, 'Richmond Walks.' Worryingly, as the two of us approached where the event was set up, but seeing no sign of a table for us, a woman I'd never met before came up and proffered a hand,
'Janis!' she said. Well, I was wearing my name tag. 'You're our star,' she said, 'we've put your quote on our cover.'
'Ok,' said I, having no idea what she was talking about and hoping she'd mistaken me for someone else.
But no, well, sort of. My quote WAS on the cover of an insert in the Richmond Review, but somehow I now had an Indian name. Jania. Jania says.... and then the most puke-making part of what I had written, the bit tacked onto the end, the bit where Peter had stood over me waiting for me to pen something that he was supposed to have sent in an hour ago and said,
'They want something encouraging, something rallying...'
Woefully, I complied.

Inside, my piece had been shortened to about two sentences, and the bit where I encouraged Richmond City to actually provide some pavements if they want people to walk was of course, nowhere in sight.
And of course the picture.
But it was born out today when I was sitting in the traffic and the heat and a young woman with a pushchair was having to walk in the cycle lane because there was no pavement.
Disgraceful.

Oh well.

When Kris and I were packing up our stuff, to our right, a man with a two-handed kite seemed to actually be flying. But then we realised he was standing on a massive skateboard with enormous wheels.
Heat plays some odd tricks.