Sorry! I'm back now - sorry, sorry, sorry!

Oh, lovely Japanese friends, many apologies for my absence. I became lazier than ever this summer. The problem started in the middle of July. After visiting a lovely lavender festival in the countryside (see photo - beautiful! Not me. The lavender, I mean) and watching Spain win the World Cup, I was ill. I had a really bad cold. As you know, colds are very bad for the head, so I think part of my brain exploded and then after that I forgot I had a blog. (Possibly, since then my brain has repaired itself but it's difficult to know for sure - it was always a strange brain, you see.) Anyway, please forgive me and here, for your entertainment (or torture), is a short history of The Rest of My Summer. I hope you enjoy it.

暑さ (correct kanji?)

Yesterday (Friday) the temperature went above 30 degrees! Lots of people said, "Oh it's too hot" but I don't think it was. It was a perfect summer day and when I finished work at the shop, I went home and had lunch in my garden. It was really bright!

City garden

On Tuesday I went to my friends' house for dinner in New Cross in London. Simon and Kate have a little old house there and have lived there many years. They have a small, beautiful, quite wild garden and I wanted to show it to you:

4th July

My family celebrated 4th July last weekend. Not because it was American Independence Day but because it was Auntie Penny and Uncle Bob's 40th wedding anniversary. Congratulations them! The weather was great and we sat in their garden drinking Pimms and lemonade and eating salmon and cake (not together) :)

Mum and Dad's house

Recently, I've spent some weekend days at Mum and Dad's house. Mum works for a pre-school (幼稚園) so she has to do lots of craft-work with the kids. Last week the theme was The Wild West. I really loved my Mum's design for a Native American face. It made me smile:This is Mum and Dad's garden. It always looks beautiful in the summer - full of green leaves and flowers. But at the moment, the grass is really dry (no rain for days!):

New camera!

Hello, sorry (AGAIN) for the big pause. Thanks to Shun in Japan, I have a lovely new camera (lucky lucky me) so I can show you some more of my summery life (lucky lucky you!). Since the middle of June the weather has been good (bansai!) which is very exciting for British people because we usually expect summer weather to be quite bad. At the end of June it was my sister's birthday. There were two parts to it:
a) we all went to her local park for a picnic :)
b) we all went back to her house to watch England lose to Germany in the World Cup :(
So it was a happy balance of emotion.

And now . . .

And now . . . my camera is broken!
But life is good and I'm really enjoying being an M and Co shop-girl :)
Hope you are all very well, Japanese friends. I think of you very often! Happy rainy season to you!