Frozen peas

My friend suggested putting frozen peas in water to encourage dogs to drink more. Today the heat was worse than yesterday so I tried the trick. Juno stared at the peas for a long time before backing away from the bowl and hiding behind the sofa.

My friend Rod arrived late afternoon just as I got a call from Josh whose train journey from Edinburgh to Oxford was not going smoothly. He’d got as far as Stafford where he was due to change trains, but no train had arrived. After 90 minutes of confusion he managed to get a local service to Wolverhampton and waited there another couple of hours before another local train took him to Birmingham New Street. Here his options for getting any further south ran out - no trains due to a fire on the line, and all the intercity buses were fully booked. He got a local bus to the furthest south of Birmingham he could - and sat on the kerb in a retail park and…. Phoned his mum of course.

My grumpiness at having to drive almost to Birmingham and back dissipated once I realised that the dog and I were in the coolest place possible. The roads were clear, we had aircon and Radio 4… in many ways it was the most pleasant part of the day.