No! It’s not love. Just another fucking heatwave. Look, I’m British of Welsh and Irish extraction. That means wind and rain and damp. I’m used to it. What I’m not used to is temperatures over 30oC. I love the cold, snow-capped mountainsides, the hills that funnel the driving winds, the drizzle that doesn’t register until you find yourself soaking wet. But sunshine, that doesn’t feel right; at least to me.
I know some of you out there love sunning yourselves, lying on golden sands, feeling the ocean breeze as you turn a shade of brown. I don’t go brown, I go red; that’s my Celtic heritage.
This year is also particularly bad for my allergies. As I get older, they seem to be getting worse, and I become allergic to more things. I remember, as a teenager, people asking me why I was inside. Well, fucking allergies. There was this time when I was outside; we lived near farmland, and my brother and I went out to play in the fields. I think it was a wheat field (which is now a housing estate). Anyway, that night I had a severe asthma attack. As a young kid, that kind of thing scares you shit-less.
From then on, I avoided the summer. Experiences in childhood can shape who you are in adulthood. That is why I am very careful with my nieces, nephews, grand-nieces and grand-nephews. I have always been a safe place for them, and I always will. No matter how bad I feel, I will always be there for them. I know a lot of you feel the same way with your family.
Back to the heat. It is time we face the facts and adapt our homes to both excessive heat and excessive cold. Climate change is real, whether you believe it is man-made or not. Time to look at investing in some air-conditioning. It’s either that or getting used to sweating and oppressive heat. If only I could find someone who would like to see me, hot, naked and damp! As they said in the days when I was young, “answers on a postcard”.
