The sky is overcast and grey, the garden is waist deep in leaves and is that a nip in the air?  Yes readers, it is July in England as we know it and, we now realise, love it.  For over two months we have sweltered beneath a relentlessly beating sun and anyone who thinks we are wimps for complaining should try moving about a large, crowded city when if the humidity rose any higher, it would be classed as very hot rain.

Obviously any attempt at creativity is out of the question, not that anyone would have had the strength or inclination to read anything.  And the heatwave couldn’t have come at a worse time than in the middle of the summer social season when no-one sits still for a moment.  I had to leave a performance of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ because of sheer exhaustion and that was taking place outside with the champagne to hand.  Imagine the Calcutta-esque experience of being INSIDE a London theatre, the most uncomfortable places on earth on a good night.

When not lying quietly on the sofa with my brain attempting to melt out through my ears, I have been shopping.  Some duties rise above even personal pain and a winter wardrobe doesn’t plan itself.  (So far a tweed jacket and two dresses; it’s a start). In an icy, air conditioned store even choosing a pair of tights can be made to last hours and that’s been the outer limit of my attempts at  creative thinking.

Last year, and I do keep records, the allotment only required watering on three occasions.  This year the one imperative work of the day has been to get there by 7.00 am and pour thousands of gallons onto the parched earth.  On reflection I may have overdone it a bit due to seasonal mental impairment and an overheated head. I’ve seen drier paddy fields.

And as Head of Empathy the suffering of others has been uppermost in my mind, particularly the plight of wildlife. ( Empathy, by the by, is really draining, even for someone like me to whom it comes naturally.  Don’t even try it.)   No less than three squirrels have died in my garden in the last two weeks; the last one falling thirty feet from a tree and narrowly missing Elder Son as he drank his morning espresso.  Perhaps they get heat stroke too?

The intolerable temperatures makes sleeping next to impossiable and so everyone else is in a foul and tetchy mood but, and there is always a plus side if you look hard enough,  I am now completely up to date on every box set that has ever been available online.  Another week and I might have been reduced to watching ‘Love Island’ at three in the morning.  The horror, the horror!

But despite what the doom mongers would have us believe I am sure this won’t happen again for another forty years.  It’s just God’s way of reminding us that we are British and dismal summers have made us what we are.  Much more of this and we’d be turning into foreigners, taking siestas, drinking Campari, driving on the wrong side of the road.  Let’s bear that in mind and be grateful.  It wasn’t THAT bad.  There wasn’t even a hosepipe ban.