Before the swallows fly south.

Get up at seven thirty to a perfect summer morning, Norman is still asleep in his bed as I make breakfast and doesn't even stir when I put his outside in the garden. Perhaps it is because he knows there is never any shortage of food anywhere that I live, that he has become more relaxed. After breakfast, I want to check to see if my bid on eBay for a rollator, walking aid for Felicity has been successful, but guess what? The crappy BT broadband service is down again, so I can't even read the Independant over coffee either. My old company, Kingston Communications, now offers broadband in the village, that is sixteen times faster and allegedly more reliable. The first job after my holiday is to switch supplier. Clement texts and I arrange to drop off his signed rental agreement at Sarah's on my way to Cherry. Norman and I arrive shortly after nine, Sarah and Alice are watching old reruns of "Friends" on TV and Louis has gone back to school today. Clement emerges from the toilet and he signs the document and then faxes it to the landlord in London. I arrange to come back, after I have collected Dolly and Teddy, so that we can walk on the Westwood together. Andrew has the girls staying at Cherry and I can hear them upstairs in the bathroom as I collect the dogs. Andrew is on holiday this week. After collecting Clement, we drive to the Westwood and make our way round our usual loop. The weather is perfect, about twenty five degrees with a slight Westerly breeze, Clement tells me about his holiday in France with Alice and we chat about his degree course. I suggest that he and I have a day out with Andrew later in the week, after Laura and Rebecca have returned to school, he agrees and later I drop him off in Beverley, before returning the dogs to Cherry around eleven thirty. As I arrive back home, Andrew texts to say he is at Cherry Golf club with Laura, so after making sure Norman has some water and checking eBay, now that the broadband is back up, to discover that we were the successful bidders on the rollator, I drive back to Cherry and meet up with Andrew and Laura on the driving range. They have nearly finished and after a few minutes, we adjourn to the club house, where we buy some tea and coffee for Andrew and myself and some sweets for Laura. We take our drinks outside in the sun by the putting green. Laura tells me about their trip to London and Andrew says he will contact Clement and let me know what they have arranged for us later. I leave at half past twelve and drive to the Leisure Centre and arrive in the pool for ten to one. There is hardly anybody in the water and we are back on normal term time routine, so the pool doesn't close at one thirty. I have the fast lane all to myself and after warming up with 400m backstroke, switch to 400m butterfly, swum as 8 x 50m repeats with a good rest interval inbetween. The core muscles of my back and abdomen are strengthening and consequently I am able to put more power into the double pulse that drives the stroke. Barring illness, I will spend another couple of weeks on two length repeats on fly, before progressing to three and four and eventually back up to eight lengths in due course. After fly I swim 400m freestyle at pace and then 400m breastroke. The same core muscles drive the breaststroke as the fly and I find that my stroke count has reduced from eight per length to seven and a half. "A half stroke in breaststroke is a kick without a pull." Finally I finish off with 4 x 100m individual medley, which, after my trip to holland will become 2 x 200m, and then easing down with 200m freestyle and 200m very easy backstroke. After changing, I drink tea and eat some oaties in the cafe, before driving to Morrisons to do some shopping. Adjacent to the supermarket is a Halfords store, so I enquire about EU breakdown kits. They have some in for thirty pounds, but when I check the contents, there is only about a fivers worth of kit, so I resolve to put my own together and find an adequate first aid kit in pound stretcher for four pounds. Later in Morrisons, I buy some extra strong teabags and some gravy granules, that my brother, Graham, requested we bring to Holland next week and some more breakfast supplies for Norman and I. By the time I finish shopping it is four o'clock, so I park on Albert terrace, pop in to see Felicity and give her the good news about her walking aid, before strolling round the corner to Westwood Road to collect Iain Scott and take him to Roaemary's house. She shows him round her beautiful, but somewhat overgrown garden, and once I am sure the ice has been broken, I make my excuses and drive home to Tickton for half past five. Norman is starving and as soon as I have unpacked the shopping, I open a large dog tin for him. After he has eaten we make our usual pilgrimage down to the little wooden bridge over the drain. The heat has gone out of the day and as we approach the snickett, there are flocks of swallows congregating and twittering in the silver birch trees in the gardens by our path. Within a few weeks, they will have flown South for the winter. I let Norman off his lead at the bridge and he immediately turns round and sets off for home, which is why I don't let him off earlier! On our way back home, we play the "praise and pat" game, Normy stopping to be patted and told what a good boy he is, before scuttling forward ten metres or so with his tail wagging. When we were kids we used to be able to buy little friction cars, that you pulled back on the carpet to wind up, and when you released them they would shoot forward a few metres before their mechanism wound down, Norman is like a little hairy friction car. We get home for seven and I realise that I am too tired to cook the pork chop that I defrosted this morning, so I put it back in the fridge and get out the ante pasta, for the second day running. After dinner I read the papers and am underwhelmed by David Cameron's reshuffle of his cabinet. It seems like the few people with any sense and principle from the Tory party, have been replaced by right wingers. Barring a Falklands type war, it looks like Young Cameron will be toast after the next election. But never underestimate the establishments ability to find a handy war when they need one. Perhaps I am getting just too old and cynical. To bed at ten.