It seems to have been an even hotter day if possible than yesterday. I rode out to the guns this morning. Saw another hoopoe; he pitched quite close to us. This afternoon we had various swimming stunts amongst ourselves in the canal, and impossible bets – I ended up 30/ down so it wasn’t a very profitable afternoon.
This evening the divisional band came and played to the brigade – two bands, one bagpipes and the other a brass band. I believe they are going to come and cheer us up three times a week. A very big camel corps of about five hundred camels with Indian troops have been resting close to us all day; they went away again this afternoon.
We’ve had no fresh meat now for about a week. They say four meat transports have been sunk and we aren’t likely to get any for a long time, but we are existing very well on “bully” disguised various ways.
Several of the men have now got chameleons and are trying them on different backgrounds to see how many different colours they can change. One man caught a snake of sorts yesterday, I don’t know what sort he is – sand coloured and about three feet long. They gave him a small chameleon to eat yesterday and the bulge was still visible today.
There are a good many scorpions about and several of the men have shaken them out of their blankets; I hope I don’t get one in my flea bag.