Today is a bank holiday - and a welcome break from the Berlitz intensive I am doing this week. The heatwave continues, with no hint of rain to encourage the increasingly parched garden. I've been skulking indoors, playing with paint. At first I was thrilled to see how talented I was (ha ha). But I soon realised my delusion. Painting the same vase of flowers four times has been an interesting exercise, uncovering new layers of incompetence at each attempt. Here is the fourth version:

The splat of ochre has to be explained - it's an achillea, though you wouldn't know it.
Onwards and upwards...