Heatwave thoughts
'I mean, what else can you possibly do in this heat except sit by the pool and drink cocktails while they mist you with Evian?'
Hello to you & welcome to our very, very warm corner of the Sussex countryside.
I am writing to you from my darkened bedroom, where I have spent a lot of time over the last few days, cooling down by watching reruns of Sex And The City and misting myself with the spray bottle I usually use for my houseplants. It’s no Evian at the Soho House pool, but it’ll do.
Productivity is at all-time low here, and I’m clearly not the only one, as evidenced by my mostly empty email inbox. “It feels like lockdown,” my friend Emily told me as we messaged back and forth over Instagram DMs; she's currently at her house in France, where temperatures are exceeding 40 degrees. There’s a hush settling over everything that feels reminiscent of those late spring lockdown days, when the universe somehow knew that we were all stuck at home and brought the sunshine as a peace offering.
It’s a shame that this heat, the dense, humid, 32-but-feels-like-40 kind, feels anything but peaceful. Not one single building on British shores is set up for anything above 25 degrees - we flounder and flail and flop, cancelling everything, panic-buying the latest miracle fan with one-day delivery on Amazon Prime. We are the proverbial ‘boy who cried heatwave.’
As I waft from room to room in various states of undress, trying to stay cool, the sound of BBC Radio Two follows me through the house. Jeremy Vine seemingly dedicates almost the entirety of his show to answering the question, ‘is this current heatwave worse than the one in 1976?’ People who remember that particular summer are interviewed; the general consensus is that, yes, it was much worse in 1976, and yes, we are all pathetic snowflakes.
Like Glasto, or Royal weddings, or Children in Need, an extreme weather event has a funny way of uniting us all. Emails no longer begin with a simple, ‘how are you?’ now that temperatures have reached 30+ - we must make comment, however brief, with hopes and prayers that our acquaintances or colleagues are not ‘melting.’
This morning, I woke at 5am, poured myself out of bed and walked up the lane to watch the sunrise from the field at the very top. Everything was densely quiet, the air cool, the world not yet awake - except, of course, for the birds, and possibly also a pheasant or deer, judging by the mysterious rustlings in the hedgerows and woodland. It was beautiful, forbidden almost, as though I was not supposed to be there but had somehow snuck my way in.
These heatwave days move at their own pace, and so do we, barefoot and in as little clothing as we can bear. I hope, wherever you are, that you’ve been able to change pace just a little this week.
Happy Friday, lovely readers. Sending only the coolest vibes your way (and by ‘cool’, I mean…not hot)
This episode 🤣Geri’s terrible acting is so hun coded
We have been peddling through in our painfully-warm house with nothing but a small, half-rusted desk fan which Aidan stole from his office. We've agreed that we will invest in an air con unit as soon as we can 😂