It’s a glorious day here in Bermuda. The sun is shining, a light south west wind is blowing off the ocean and it isn’t, but feels like, thirty one degrees. That’s in Celsius because try as I might, I can not get used to using Fahrenheit. I even have a converter chart on the fridge, but it really means nothing to me when I look up the temperature and it says ‘eighty-eight’. My brain just won’t do it. However I didn’t start my blog today to write about the weather, or did I?

It’s now summer here. And talking about my poor brain, the leaves are turning orange and falling off the trees. What? Yes it looks like autumn in quite a few areas of Bermuda, but the weather is getting warmer, the ocean is heating up, and flowers are blooming crazily everywhere. When this first happened last year, I had come from Spring in the UK, so it really weirded me out big time. This year I have returned from a month in New Zealand during their autumn, to have these autumnal signs happening here. How confusing. I know the reason is because it’s getting hot, and with heat comes dry spells of no rain. The trees drop their leaves to protect themselves from drought. But it just doesn’t look right to me, albeit beautiful.

Some other things get to me as well. One example is walking into the supermarket and it’s like walking into the fridge. I swear if I had a dollar for every time I said to my lovely husband that I should have brought my hoodie with me, I’d be rich. Air conditioning is far too cold, but I guess I complain that the heating is far too high in the UK, so it’s comparable. When I walk back into the heat it feels stifling and I have to acclimatize all over again. Soon the weather will get really hot, then air conditioning is a life saver. I don’t like running it because of global warming and keeping my footprint small. The shops in Hamilton attract tourists once they work out it’s cool in there. I succumbed to this in town on Monday and found I didn’t feel guilty at all. My sunglasses are another mind bender. There they are on top of my head and I pop them on and voila, they steam up. Yes they steam up going from inside cool to outside warm. This polarity is quite strange to me.

With the warm come insects and especially the ants and cockroaches. My lovely husband has been training little sparrows to come in closer to the house and as a result we have a lot less ants. They do snatch the occasional cockroach, but they are so fast, it’s often hard to do. I opened the sun umbrella today, forgetting all about the germ ridden little critters and one plopped out narrowly missing my lunch. It scurried off at a pace that would impress Husain Bolt, but left me feeling quite uneasy. I was so looking forward to that salad and it really put me off. They are flying now too so even if you think you got them, they often flit off suddenly. I purchased a fly swat, its good and strong, and I miss with it often. It’s great fun though and makes me feel I’m winning. Now I know I have Buddhist tendencies, and believe all living things are equal on the planet, but not cockroaches. Ants somehow get between my toes and give me a nasty nip. It doesn’t leave a bite mark but it sure hurts when it happens. It’s a test of my willpower to be kind to those ones. I do have bites, but think there’s the occasional mosquito when we sit outdoors at night time. I have gone back to my ‘keep biting creatures away’ baby oil rub down after my shower each day. It works a treat and if it doesn’t at least makes my tan look great.

Now those sparrows have become tame very fast. Last week I made peanut butter. It’s a lengthy process, roasting, shelling, de-husking, blending and bottling; which takes quite a bit of time. If you have the time, the peanut butter is so much better than the bought kind, half the price, and lasts six months in the fridge. Oh unless you have teenagers. Anyway, I was working away and realized I had an audience – eight little sparrows perched on the carpet behind me, desperate for the peanuts. Hmmmm. I’m not sure about that. Hanging out the washing today a few hopped around to the line with me, and followed me back. They are turning up at exactly one o’clock, which is when I eat my lunch, and get really excited when my lovely husband pulls into the driveway after work. I had to laugh as they all perched around the rim of the table last night at dinner. Good grief!.

More soon – Sally