The hottest day of the year in the UK. On this day in 1916 the British Army lost the highest number of men ever in one day. At the first Battle of the Somme, by the end of this day 20,000 British soldiers had been killed and 40,000 wounded. The event gets three lines in today’s paper. And still our soldier’s get killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Tony Blair deserted a sinking ship and left us in the brown stuff. I hope the US is not just left with McCain’s chips.

What a day this has been. My blog is up and running with three items posted so far about the Yarm Writers Group and North Yorkshire Village Dogs. Then I received an email about the 100 words website wanting to know whether Samwin was me. Apparently one of my entries for June was featured on the site. My American son-in-law agreed for me to post on my blog his true story ‘Dancing in a Pink Tutu.’ Despite its title the subject is golf and the importance of retaining friends.

I even got to Middlesbrough for a meeting cancelled in June.

Seventy years ago today in the UK a Mallard set a world record of 126mph for a steam locomotive . I don’t remember it; I was only one year old at the time. Nowadays an electric train is restricted to 125mph max. This weekend the last four engines of the Mallard class will be together again, probably for the very last time, at the National Railway Museum at York. There will be opportunities to photograph them together but only if you are willing to pay – too much for me I am afraid.

Today I ruminated over this while painting – kitchen doors.

It was just a dull thud. I knew immediately what had happened. Throughout the spring and summer bird strikes are a regular occurrence. They usually happen after the windows of our bungalow have been cleaned.

There was a small mark with a feather attached on the lounge window and on the path beneath was a greenfinch on its back with its claws pointing to the sky. Its greenish- yellow breast was speckled with brown showed it to be a hen bird.

A new species to add to our list of birds that had come to grief on our window panes.

Will this ever get submitted? My broadband has been playing up all day – two minutes at the most on line and the link is lost. Then it refuses to reconnect saying there is no dialing tone. There is on the phone. This is getting annoying.

It was golf this morning, the Williams show at Wimbledon this afternoon. After twenty-four years the UK has a champion there again – Laura Robson in the girls’ event.

I just hope that I don’t have to wait as long for broadband to work satisfactorily. That’s the problem at being a long way from the exchange.

I was in Stavanger, Norway twenty years ago today when 167 men lost their lives in the Piper Alpha incident in the North Sea, including 2 from the rescue craft.

I had been there too some years earlier when the Alexander Kjelland floating platform capsized. I shall always remember the scenes in Stavanger when the news broke and people were crying in the streets. And the most moving moment was in the evening when they saluted the lowering of the Norwegian flag. The platform was towed into a local fjord to be turned upright – but no more bodies were recovered.

7/7 is the third anniversary of the London bombings. In 2005 fifty-two commuters and the four suicide bombers died; seven hundred others were injured. Three bombs went off on underground tube trains, the fourth on a bus an hour later. This bombing was the largest and deadliest attack on London. Transport system in its history.

It was the biggest terrorist atrocity in the UK since Pan Am Flight 103 went down at Lockerbie in Scotland just before Christmas 1988. Two hundred and seventy people from twenty-one countries died, including eleven from Lockerbie. A Libyan man was found guilty of planting the bomb.

B stands for broadband and C for connection. If only the two of them would get it together. I might then find it easier to complete 100 words a day. It’s now more than annoying when you are half way through, even if you are using cut and paste, to lose that vital link.

At least my ISP has finally relented and replaced its premium telephone number with one that's at a local rate. Mind you it doesn’t help to talk to a service agent who tells me my modem should have a light on it when it never has.

I was expecting today’s talk to be about cricket at the Riverside, the home of Durham County Cricket Club. Durham is the most recent county to gain first class county status. Anyway the talk encompassed life in a coal mining village, the Salvation Army, brass bands and the establishment of Durham CCC. The Riverside has been so successful that it hosts England Test Matches some years. The Riverside ground sits on ten acres of land in the bend of a river with views of Lumley Castle where medieval feasts are held. The club now hosts an academy for brass bands.

Fifty years ago parking meters were introduced in London’s Mayfair. At the peak the UK had 750,000 meters. Their use declined until there are now less than one hundred left. Instead we use ‘pay and display’ parking sites or cashless meters at which you pay by mobile phone or that ubiquitous piece of plastic, the credit card. If you’re lucky you may find a town where parking is free in which you use a parking disk. There is usually a time limit of two hours with no return allowed for at least an hour. When will there be no cars?

All of us at some time have declared, “It wasn’t me!”

With children it is often the youngest in the family who needs the broadest shoulders. “It wasn’t me! It was Alby!” who committed the latest crime is a common cry.

Three children were lined up to explain who kick the football that broke the cloche protecting their father’s favourite plant. Loss of pocket money was to be their punishment.

At the eleventh hour they gained a reprieve when their joint petition of “It wasn’t him! It wasn’t us!’ was replaced by “It was Grandpa Bob!”

Oh dear that’s me!

All yesterday’s rain waterlogged the course and so today I was unable to play my normal round of golf. I had to make do with a walk instead and to treat the dogs that I met. I had heard about Labradoodles but I met a new one today – a Cockerpoo. Poodles seem to be everywhere and get it off with Labradors and now apparently Cocker Spaniels too, just to have a dog that doesn’t shed its hairs.

The papers are full of despair caused by the collapse of Fannie and Freddie in the USA. The Footsie fell by twenty percent.

There is a rain forest in the North East of England. Not many people know where it is located.

It’s in my back garden or so it seemed when I ventured out in it today after a wet and humid week. My wife and I had a blitz on it by doing those tasks that won’t go away. My back feels as if it is broken after weeding the slabs on the patio and cutting the edges of the lawn.

I had to clean up after my wife. I must not complain however because after all today is her birthday.

In the rain forest again. Mowing lawns, re-sanding the patio and then what turned out to be the difficult bit. The hardening agent for the sand has to be mixed – that part’s easy. However putting it on the sanded joints required a certain amount of experimentation. A converted detergent spray bottle didn’t work as the nozzle quickly clogged up. Using a small jug was okay, but wasteful as I could not control the amount being poured. My wife came up with the idea that worked, suggesting that I use a washing up liquid bottle. Simply brilliant. A twenty minute job.

Last month I burbled on about St Medard’s Day and how, in France, they say the weather on St Medard’s will be reflected in the weather for the next forty days. Today in the UK is St Swithin’s Day and we have the equivalent expectations about the weather. Apparently we can expect the next forty days to be sunny with outbreaks of showers. Nothing new there then; no hot weather is forecast until September.

In 1808 there were hailstones the size of golf balls which caused a lot of damage. The way I play golf alas only trees get damaged.

I have been unable to access the site for two days so I have raised a question by email to see if there is a problem.

The question now is do I continue to write 100 words a day or do I forget about this month?

I started an annual task that takes an inordinate amount of time. Pyracantha, I hate it. I would mind so much but this is my next door neighbour’s hedge; I'm always sore; I get pricked and scratched by the pyracantha’s thorns. My beech hedge is eight feet tall and five feet across the top.

Rain for most of the day. I’ve been to another Eden. Not it’s not a garden or the famous Cornwall Project. Eden Camp, North Yorkshire is a modern history museum with its main theme ‘The People’s War 1939 -1945.

Now I am suffering from information overload. The Camp housed Italian and German POWs during WWII; the museum is in the huts used by the prisoners. It has twenty-nine huts containing exhibits. Military vehicles, planes and weapons are outside at locations around the site. Four watch towers remain at the corners. Britain’s later wars up to Gulf War I are included.

I’m still waiting for the weather to be dry enough for me to finish cutting my beech hedge. I don’t have much hair, but I don’t want what little I have to stand on end from an electric shock.

The day has been given over to watching the second day of the British Open Golf Championship on TV. Many players complained about yesterday’s strong wind and rain making the course too difficult. Two players even walked off the course halfway round. It’s ironic - the leader is a golden oldie of fifty-four years and the only one to not exceed par.

Oophs! That last line from yesterday was overtaken by events; someone else just pipped the oldie to the lead. However there’s life in the old dog yet as at the end of day three he has a two shot lead.

It was the annual barbeque of a local golf club (not mine) this evening. Of course, as the food was about to be served the heavens opened and it looked like we would all get wet. Fortunately golf umbrellas saved the day, keeping us and the food dry.

Some hardy fools out continued playing golf ignoring the rain and dark.

I treated myself to a bagel for breakfast. That was fine, my big mistake was putting orange marmalade on it when I could have had lemon curd. How was I to know that in emptying the jar of marmalade I had used up the very last bit intended for a sauce, to go with the duck we were to have for dinner.

I had to make amends. I put on my walking shoes and legged it to the nearest shop. I got some exercise from the three and a half mile walk, worth it for that duck and orange sauce.

The sun’s returned. I was able to finish cutting the beech hedge that I started days ago. Eight refuse bags were filled with the bits, and I haven’t even picked them all up yet. Tomorrow is collection day so the rest will have to wait two weeks for the Council’s refuse wagon.

As I got badly bitten before, today I wore a fleece with tight cuffs, and a hat, to defeat whatever it was had taken a fancy to me. Success I thought, until I stripped off for a shower and a multi-legged insect crawled out of my belly button.

On a glorious summer’s day there are advantages to being retired. You have the opportunity to do what you want. Even if that something is nothing.

Me? I played golf, had a late lunch, did a bit of writing, and put a selective weed killer on the lawn.

What then? I had to clean up the branches deposited on the lawn by my wife, the demon with a pair of secateurs. I wouldn’t say there was a lot – just enough to fill another of those refuse bags I referred to yesterday. I didn’t collect the bits from my beech hedge.

It’s a heat wave – three days in row. It is difficult to believe that in this time my garden rain forest has turned into an arid land. The soil is so hard I cannot get a fork in it no matter how I try. I’ve tidied up at last after the beech hedge marathon. In all the clippings filled ten refuse sacks.

My library meeting today was a presentation on the establishment of Stockton’s Fiesta night club and the acts that performed there in the 1960s. This was before I came. However I do remember the Grumbleweeds from the 1970s.

We have passion flowers in our garden. Only one flower appears at a time and that only lasts for twenty-four hours. I posted a photo of one on my blog. An Italian lady from Montevideo who is on holiday in Ireland has added some information that I did not know. The passion has religious connotations; the petals represent the Apostles and the three stamens the Holy Trinity. I shall have to count the petals on the next one to come into flower.

I wonder how many days I will have to wait. The things you learn when you are seventy-one.

I would not have believed that my garden rain forest could change so rapidly into an arid land. Within five days I am looking out on a dry and barren landscape. I have had to get a watering can out just to fill the bird baths. In some parts of England today the temperature reached 29C.

This afternoon a stray dog appeared in our garden and proceeded to make itself at home by inspecting the lounge and kitchen; something it had not been invited to. It marked its territory, had a drink and, apparently well satisfied, eventually it wandered off.

As part of a challenge I have written a piece with a ‘haircut’ theme. This has been posted on the internet. Entitled “Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow,” it was really a series of random thoughts about haircuts during my life.

I included when I thought about auditioning for Hair, the musical. There really was not much point as I can’t sing and with three left feet my dancing is more one-sided that England’s football team. The audience would have recoiled in horror at the nude scene. After all, who wants to see a hairy ape on stage?

Anyway I’m completely bald.

Another scorching day. So much so in fact that we have had to resort to the garden hose to try and restore our arid garden land back to something resembling greenery. Of course the hose immediately came off the water tap; water ran down the concrete path beside the house before I could reach to turn the deluge off.

Otherwise it has been a leisurely day in which following hours of furrowed brows we finally finished the Jumbo crossword from Saturday's Times. Perhaps the wine slowed our thought processes down. Finally we may spend a night under a summer duvet.

I should have kept quiet. We have not seen the sun all day; it has been unable to burn its way through a low lying mist. That’s one of the disadvantages of living within ten miles of the North-East coast of England. The Sunderland annual air show was held at the weekend; the spectators didn’t see a plane in the air for the whole two days because of the prevailing mist. So there was no chance for them to see the Red Arrows perform over Roker beach.

Rain is forecast tonight. I hope it clears in time for golf tomorrow.

I’ve learnt something today. I always thought the fear of open and public spaces was agrophobia but much to my surprise I find I have been wrong. Agoraphobia is the correct word to use. In using the dictionary to settle the discussion, which I lost, I also picked two up more phobias – gynophobia for fear of women and nyctophobia, fear of night or darkness. I wonder if these two may go together. Also are they connected to deipnophobia, the fear of dinner parties?

I really must be careful not to get a phobia about phobias, what ever that is called.

Today’s talk at the library was given by two safety officers from Stockton Borough Council. They described their work with school children in the area and illustrated how they go about it. The first prop they showed was the shell from an armadillo which, if you saw it held up at a distance, you might take for an early cycling helmet. One of the officers had found it at a jumble sale; he was told it had been used previously as a sowing basket. One of them wore a ‘cartoon’ armadillo rubber suit in scenarios to teach children road safety.

Well I've completed two months in a row. I intended to write for 100 days. However a family bereavement and a golden wedding celebration at the end of August will make this impossible.

I have posted a piece on my blog about a lesser spotted woodpecker that stunned itself by flying into our front window. Over three quarters of an hour I was able to take photographs during its recovery. As I tried to take one just one more it regained its senses fully and flew away. Can it be the one that comes for peanuts in the bird feeder?