It ain’t half hot, Mum.

I have in the past been known to tell people that there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes. I would now like publicly to apologise to all recipients of that particular aphorism. Thirty-five degrees and a Great Wall of stifling humidity is, in my little red book at least, most definitely “bad weather”, which no manner of clothing can usefully mitigate. People have been warning us that it would get much hotter and stickier, and it suddenly did. So any plans we might have had (and we didn’t really) of spending every available minute zooming around Shanghai have had to be tempered to something  more bearably leisurely. It only takes a short trip to the local shop to buy a water melon (which are fantastic) to leave you needing another shower and a long sit down.

It was Matthew’s birthday yesterday. Many thanks to all those that sent Happy Birthday (or 生日快乐) greetings by various media. We had a trip to Decathlon today to pick up Matthew’s birthday present of a very smart new 20″ 6-speed bicycle. The school run will be even quicker (and sweatier) for what will be the last week of term. School finishes on Thursday and we then have to find ways to entertain ourselves without melting or going mad for six weeks. Visiting Shanghai Expo will certainly be on the agenda, and Matthew will hopefully be attending a Mandarin summer school in the mornings for two weeks in July.

On August 7th we fly back to the UK for two holidays, one in Keswick and one on Lundy (both booked long before anyone suggested moving to China!). I’m very much looking forward to the trip home for all sorts of reasons (some of them comestible), but I think we will also have achieved our objective of getting to a position where we will be happy to return ‘home’  to Shanghai afterwards. I’ve now managed to find a highly recommended Mandarin course starting in September so I’ll be hoping to catch Matthew up soon!

And I didn’t mention the football once.

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