This is the start of my BRD Red Velvet Building Blocks.... taken at the weekend, I have completed the last block on the bottom of the picture now as well. The thread is Gloriana silk, colour Rosewood, a beautiful rich red. I am being quite slow on this, what with the heat and so on, but it is fun to stitch. By the way, I am left-handed, you may be able to tell this from the photo, as I have started with the left side of the stitching. With plain cross-stitch like this, I can stitch it in the hand.

The weekend was hideously hot, and it has got hotter through the week. Yesterday the temperature according to television was 39, but my taxidriver told me it hit 45. Today it is forecast for 41, so goodness knows what it will in fact be. I did very little at the weekend, the usual swimming and so on, but I did manage to get to the sale at my favourite shoe shop, Aerosoles, and buy two pairs at reasonable prices.

Today Alec and I are actually at the Nicosia office of our own company, the great huge multi-national software giant. We haven't met these people before, and it is wonderful how nice they are and how willing to help us with our work permit problems. Actually we are doing the work our Cypriot lawyer should have done months ago, getting application forms filled out and signed. It is going to take a few hours to get authorisations for signatures and so on, and the MD here has meetings and has to fit us in between these. But it's quite pleasant here, the aircon is wonderful and we are in a very nice meeting room, where they bring me iced coffee at regular intervals.

I was actually rather depressed earlier this week with the heat, the horrible lawyer and so on, I had to send away for a new Shepherd's Bush kit - I used to do a lot of theirs a few years ago, but they have become rather twee lately. However one of the new ones, Sail Away, has Quaker elements and is really very nice. I do hope it will be waiting for me in Paris when I get back home on 1 August.