It's 8pm, the temperature is still hovering around 90 degrees and the weather report says humidity is only 49 per cent. Pack of lies. It's been a long, hot, clammy, contentious day. Time to let off a little steam.

I got up with a residue of day-old crossness. The UK Pension Office is chasing my late mother's estate for an over-payment of £52 retirement pension. She died Thursday night, I reported her death to them Monday morning, by which time her estate was £52 the wealthier. This from a country that loses £4 billion a year through welfare fraud. Maybe I'll make them wait a little for that cheque.

We'd earmarked today to tidy up my mother's apartment ready for showing it to potential buyers. To which end Mr F began painting the walls of the terrace dining room a very pretty shade of pale bluebell. He'd almost finished when the condo administrator, sitting in an office several miles away, phoned to tell me we'd been denounced. Apparently pale bluebell on an outward facing wall is against condo regulations. He said it in a very sorry-about-this-but-I-can't-ignore-the-Gestapo manner. Five minutes later Mr Snoop himself appeared at our door, with Mrs Snoop hovering behind him in the stair hall, perhaps waiting to see whether I socked him across the jaw. I mean.
What grieved me about this snooping is that in all the weeks my mother was sick none of her neighbours, NOT ONE, rang her bell to ask how she was or to offer help. And after she died, though I did inform the condo gossip, I received not a single note of condolence. But start painting your walls and oh boy, they're all eyes and ears.
So that was my day.
Oh. The condo administrator dropped by too. We reached a compromise. The inward-facing wall can stay blue, the rest must be returned to the regulation shade of Grunge. Poor guy. He said his phone is jumping off the hook all day long with informants having hysterics.

But now for the good news. I'm going to take my third shower of the day, then, wrapped in a towel, I'm going to eat an icecream and go to bed with Dracula. I love that book.