Another hottest day of the year! We are truly being spoilt. Knowing how the heat affects my furry and feathery wards, I wondered about the other poor animals spending all day in the blazing sun. Then I came across what I always thought was a cattle feeder full of sheep wool. I looked for the coatless sheep, but in vain. They had probably hidden in naked shame.

After a (very brief) search for some sheep (my phone camera at the ready) I finally got time to visit my friends’ fantastic shop (www.memorypalaceemporium.com) and with a cup of tea and a chocolate brownee (I will have to walk like crazy today to keep my Fitbit happy) we managed to put the world right. As they say, sometimes the best therapy is a cuppa with a friend.

As we chatted a man approached us and asked about the opening hours of the nearby pub. We got talking and found out that he and his wife had travelled over from Pennsylvania (that’s right – all the way across the Atlantic) to see if they could find her relatives. Her great-grandfather was born in the village and they wondered if there is some way to access parish records. My friend (let’s call her Lisa) dived into the depths of Internet and surfaced with all the info on opening hours of the library, the bookshop and even how to get the keys to the local church. I must say that I was impressed by her surfing skills even more than by the speed of her wifi.

We are both believers in positive thinking and acting and I think that the couple must have been a bit overwhelmed by the strange continental women falling over themselves to point them in the right direction. You know about karma, don’t you? Whatever you give out will return to you.

Coming back home would have been a routine journey had I not kidnapped a wasp from the shop’s car park – I found out about it when I leant back in my driver seat and it gave me a vicious sting. The stupid insect clearly didn’t know that I have just been helping an American couple to find their family or otherwise it didn’t care about karma.

The knowledge that you have an angry wasp in the car with you, you don’t know whether it is flying around or trapped under your shirt and you are unable to stop for the next few minutes, certainly adds to the excitement of travel.

Needless to say that finding upon my arrival that Butch (yes, I am back to calling the cockerel Butch) and Grey had been demolishing my tomatoes, didn’t surprise me at all.