It is more than thirty degrees warm here in the Lake District.
That is hotter than I remember it being here, ever.
It is scorching, and dry, and every now and again a hot little breeze whips the dust into tiny hurricane fingers, which spin and then dissolve again after a few moments.
This is one of the moments when I am absolutely and profoundly glad that I did not pay sufficient attention at school. Fortunately, in the present heatwave, I have not got a job which involves any kind of effort or responsibility.
I am sitting in the shade on the taxi rank, doing nothing whatsoever, and it is almost too hot even for that.
I did not come out here until after I thought that the worst of the traffic would have subsided, because my car is not blessed with air conditioning, being a minimum budget affair. I did not at all like the idea of sitting, hotly, in a metal-and-glass shroud under a determined, baking sun, in an unmoving queue of traffic between here and Ambleside, so I waited until teatime.
It is, at least, cooler in our house, although today has had its difficulties.
To our heartfelt relief, our beloved leaders at the Council have finally noticed the sinkholes opening in the alley at the back of the house, and have pledged to resolve the problem.
This is a bit of an exaggeration. Mostly they are potholes. There was only one sinkhole, a while ago, and even then it was only a couple of feet deep.
Today they have come to make good their promises, in the persons of a large gang of sweating, tattooed men in fluorescent vests, perched on the backs of enormous slow-moving machinery.
They scraped the surface off the alley and have replaced it with a beautiful shiny black one. They have done half of it so far, and are coming back tomorrow for the rest.
It has been like being a spectator at a monumentally noisy and rather unappealing Disneyland Parade. Enormous machines trundled slowly down the alley, with one or two chaps on the top, only they were not waving, but peering anxiously at the ground and trying not to bump into anybody’s wall. They were followed by little bands of workmen, armed with rakes and spades and brushes, who were not singing Chim Chimeney and doing pirouettes, which was disappointing. Real life lets itself down sometimes.
Obviously we were very pleased about this, but the thunderous noise involved meant that it was not really possible for me to follow my chief intention for the day, which was to catch up on some more sleep.
It is still too hot for running up fells, even at nights, which you can’t do anyway because of not having streetlights installed for the benefit of the sheep, and so I have decided to spend the heatwave trying to restore my life to something a little less excruciating. I have become rather plaintively sorry for myself in the musculature department lately, and would like all of the bits of my legs which endlessly twang and twinge and ache to be restored to tranquillity for a while.
I went to lie on the bed, but of course it was too hot to close the windows, and it was like trying to sleep in the middle of a test centre for jumbo jet engines, with blasts of deafening noise and hot air rippling through the bedroom, so I got up again, and rather limply did some ineffectual housework.
I didn’t do very much. I have already got a tidy house, and a tidy garden, and some food ready-prepared in the fridge, and although there were all sorts of things that I could have been doing, I really didn’t feel like doing any of them at all.
I sat in the kitchen with a glass of iced water with lemon and cucumber, and talked to Number Two Daughter whilst we got ourselves ready for work.
When I came to take the dogs out I discovered that even though the workmen had finished for the day, we were still macarooned. The tarmac at the back of the house was not cooling down, and it was still so sticky that my flip-flops adhered to it instantly, and I had to peel them off the surface and leap inelegantly back on to the garden path. I went out at the front.
Even then we did not stay out for very long. The dogs declined to go very far, because even the normal tarmac was burning their paws, and they thought that they preferred the carpet, reasonably enough.
I was just setting out to work when Mark came home, the exciting world of rural broadband having petered out early, mostly because all of the equipment they have ordered has not yet arrived. It is difficult to install rural broadband when the back of your van is empty of wires or radios.
Mark is secretly hoping that they will not come in any great hurry, so that he can have tomorrow off as well.
It is too hot to work.
Perhaps we will go and have another swim when we have finished work.
