I’ll just say it once: it’s hot. Fucking hot. Ridiculously hot. Which is not really the point. The point is that it’s been like this… foreverrrrr!!! I can’t remember what rain even looks like. Sleeping under the covers. Wearing long trousers. It’s all consigned to history. The only time I’ve used the tube lately was to get to an airport. My commuter days are strictly e-bike. And what’s more, I no longer even bother to ‘check the weather’ before leaving. Because I simply KNOW it won’t rain. And if it does… if it does… how wonderful would that feel? But it won’t. It’s never going to rain again. The world has become a dry, rainless, arid desert. All the world. We’ve fucked it up so royally that it will never recover. Farmers can’t farm. Forests can’t stop burning. And the temperature remains solidly over 30 with no chance of respite in the near (or far?) future.

Basically; you can’t please the Brits. We’re either moaning that it doesn’t stop raining or we’re moaning that it doesn’t rain enough. We went from ‘chilly for the time of year’ to ‘I can’t stop sweating’ in one day, long ago in about May (I really have no recollection of when it wasn’t like ‘this’).

I think the benefits of heatwaves slightly outweigh the costs. Mainly: it’s sunny outside. The whole day. And half the night. We can plan barbecues more than a day away. It helps me to tan. I haven’t driven with the top up for 3 months. No tennis matches have been cancelled due to ‘the weather’. (There’s no such thing as ‘too hot to play’; not in the heterosexual world). We get to eat more ice cream. Lots more.

On the flip side: we can use hoses. Well, in my guise as ‘Mr Loophole’, I’m allowed to water mine, but generally, NO! And the trees are dying. They reckon up to 75% of British trees cannot survive this sustained heat and drought. Which will then reduce the oxygen available to you humans to breathe. I’m alright, I’m a cyborg. But farming is a big thing. It’s not just something Jeremy Clarkson invented a few years ago so he could stay on the tv. No. We need farms. They provide food. But this year; not so much. Luckily it’s not all food. Just… bread. Milk. Cheese. Meat. Oh, and vegetables, I suppose.

It’s so hot here that Lila and Joey have gone to Malta. For some ‘relief’. (Have you ever been to Malta? I have. It’s the world’s furnace. But they’re having fun. And using sun screen.)

But next Wednesday the sun takes on a new role. As part of a duet with the moon for the purposes of the eclipse. And this time; there’s no cloud cover expected to ‘rain on the parade’. At about 6.15 in the evening the moon will travel across the sun and obscure most of it, before our very eyes. Though really, you’re not supposed to look at it because you’ll go blind. Though we will all look because humans, and cyborgs, are just drawn to such wonders of natural majesty. You can buy all the virtually opaque 3-d glasses things from Amazon, but when it happens, you just wanna see it for real.

So enjoy the heat, enjoy the eclipse, I’ll see you Wednesday about 8.15 in the A&E at Moorfields Eye Hospital. Or I won’t see you.

Happy Sunny Saturday

A xxxx