DAY 9 Mon 12 June

It was a disturbed night last night with the dogs running off and barking at all hours, but I managed to sleep further into the morning than usual (that means I actually made it through till 7am – lol).
Since then we have been spending time out with Figgy – it didn't look too good first time I got out there – he was lying down... but he seems to be resting. And when he gets up he is more than happy to eat. It was forecast for another scorcher today, and it lived up to that. We spent a fair amount of the morning out checking on Figgy. While he was laying down the grooms would cool him off with water, as he had found the most comfortable place to lie down – unfortunately it was in the hot sun. He seems to have an aversion to shade. There were some shenanigans amongst the other horses, with Dory and Nazeer hooning around a bit, and two of the youngsters making a break for it.
Eventually it became too hot and I had to escape inside. I have pretty much become acclimitised to the heat over here, but today and yesterday were extreme.
In the afternoon I had a phonecall from Morad, and was heading round there to visit. It was at this stage I realised just how hot it was out there. The metal of the front gate was almost hot enough to burn, and as I was walking around, there was an equal amount of heat radiating off the sand as coming down from the sun. In fact the soles of my feet were getting very very hot, even through the thick soles of my sneakers. Add on top of that that about five minutes after stepping outside your throat is so dry. I was really looking forward to getting to Morad's and having a cold drink of water. Unfortunately the field I walk across had been completely blocked off near the road by a new fence. So I had to turn around and walk all the way back. When I got back to the farm, Jack was there checking Figgy over. The prognosis was not good - poor boy. I didn't really want to leave after that, but I had told Morad that I would head round, so I borrowed a key to the back gate and went out that way. Once again I nearly burnt my hand on the gate, especially getting this one closed, but eventually I managed to get it closed and locked, and headed up to Morad's. He was outside talking to a friend but it didn't take long until we could head inside into the slightly cooler house, and I finally got a nice cool glass of water. Needed more than one glass to get the throat back to feeling like a normal throat however. We watched a little bit of the soccer on TV – Switzerland versus Chile. Switzerland is the team I managed to draw in the work pool, and I have absolutely no idea how they are going – lol.
When I got back to Maryanne's, Sabine was mixing up some stuff to massage him, and I cooled off for a bit in the airconditioning before heading out to see how he was going – it was so hot walking to and from Morad's.
Figgy's legs were really stocked up, which is to be expected when his heart isn't working so well, and Sabine spent quite a while out there with him massaging with her special stuff – I put some on his ouchy bits too, and it was really quite interesting how it made my hands feel – a mixture of hot and cold (I couldn't work out which) and almost numb – pretty potent for vinegar and essential oils!
While spending the evening inside with Maryanne, the power went out :( It was out for about 2 hours, some of which we spent on the computers in the dark. Then the modems started playing up so I gave up and went to bed, but not to sleep – for one thing, it was stinking hot, and for another because most of Maryanne's staff were still here because of the fact that her and Mohamed were going to Alexandria, and because Figgy was so sick, they were all outside making the most of the cooler air outside.
The power finally came back on around 11pm, and I decided to crash in the lounge, hoping to make the most of the airconditioning.