Heat

We are having what some call a 'heatwave.'  I like to remind them that this is August and we are supposed to have heat in August.  They never thank me, just whine about the weather the week before.  When the sun is hot people sit in the park and turn red, then spend days whining about paid.  When the sun is hidden people spend days whining about the weather.  

This is UK normality.

The real problem is being one of the Atlantic Isles.

To the east lies a huge continent, to the west a huge ocean.  

From the west we get the jest stream bringing air of various qualities all the way from the far flung USA.  This includes their left over hurricanes which drench Scotland and the north west mostly, and occasional dross from their many volcanoes that they like to set off.  This week we have been enduring the smoke, high up, from Newfoundland wild fires, though we can produce these ourselves, as Edinburgh has shown this week.  No doubt, but without any evidence, all such fires are started by some wee scruff who thinks he is funny.  Occasionally accidents cause them, but cynic that I am I suspect arson.

To the east we have little in summer and Autumn.  It is in winter that these eastern types send us the Artic cold that they have developed and freeze the eastern coastline for days on end.  They, like the Yanks, never apologise for this.

I sit huddled over a hot laptop, with a thick jacket on my back, because of the draughts that have caused my throat to cease, my cough to continue, and left me knowing that if I go outside into the heat there I will get sunburnt in minutes.

Life is so unfair.

However, it is a good job I am not one to complain.  

Not being one to complain, and in spite of my reluctance, I hobbled down to the Liberal Club and the somewhat unfriendly locals, to meet the 'Last of the Summer Wine' contingent.  Nobody was there!  Only the leader was already seated in our corner when I joined.  One was away in Somerset, wherever that is, having another holiday, two are in hospital, one with his head and lack of use of legs, the other recovering in a hospice  treatment centre after a car accident I did not know about.  

I thought he was having a long holiday!  

Only two others arrived.  

For a SPAM meeting it was not good, and at £3:40 a pint I would rather have been bored back home.  

We did not even begin to put the world to rights.  A poor show really.  

I may suggest forgetting it next month and seek an alternative.

I clambered home, amazed at how the road moves as I walk, climbed the stairs and decided to seek a lesser brew next time.