According to the august Daily Telegraph, tomorrow is supposed to be the hottest day of the year so far.
I was pleased to hear this, and checked on the little thing on my telephone which helpfully predicts the weather.
It said that we can expect it to be sixteen degrees in the Lake District. It added, less helpfully, that it is going to be twenty four decrees in London.
I was underwhelmed.
I am still underwhelmed. Really the Government ought to consider doing something about this North/South divide. It is completely unreasonable for London to have all of the good weather. Worse than that, I have been reading that somebody somewhere, probably in London, is planning to cool the planet down by spraying something into clouds to make them rain more.
I am unimpressed with this, if anybody feels short of rain then a quick holiday in the Lake District would sort them out in no time. I do not think that anybody in Windermere is feeling gripped by anxiety that we are too warm. I admit to having finally removed my thermal vest, but I am still a long way away from wishing to sit in the garden in my underwear.
Actually I am always a long way away from that point. Loafing about in the sun is not only dull and uninteresting, unless accompanied by liberal sloshing of Pimm’s and some giggly friends, but also it always leaves me looking uncomfortably as though I had fallen into a pot of the dye from Barbie’s Princess Dress Factory.
I have not been loafing about today. Today has happened at a run, or at least at an undignified scurry.
I was late to finish last night, and once again the dawn was beginning to beam cheerfully through the windows when I collapsed into bed. I did not mind this, because it had been an entertaining night, full of rascally stag parties, and Oliver on the door of the pub opposite the taxi rank. It is always nice to have an ally close by.
This meant that I did not rise early, as is my custom on Sundays, and indeed, some effort was required to force myself into life even at half past eleven, when I did finally emerge.
Oliver came with me on the morning, or actually afternoon, dog-emptying excursion over the fells. I had hoped to encourage him to look at all of the spring flowers and take some joy in the happiness of the season, but it was a grey, chilly day, and they were all closed except the optimistic primroses. In any case he is going back to Bath tomorrow, and his thoughts were fully occupied with plans and considerations for the term ahead.
I had promised to make his some biscuits to take back with him, which I had intended to leave until tomorrow, so that they would be fresh for as long as possible, but recollected that I had got an awful lot of other things to do before he left at lunchtime tomorrow, and so it would have to be today.
I did not at all want to spoil my newly-clean kitchen by cooking things in it. Fortunately I haven’t got round to cleaning the oven yet, so I didn’t mind that bit, but of course biscuits are made with icing sugar, and no matter how careful I was, it drifted all over my beautifully clean kitchen in sticky clouds, and then settled all over my gleamingly polished shelves.
I do not have the smallest intention of polishing them again.
I will just have to be careful not to look at them.
After that I had to race round to finish my usual Sunday things before it was time to go to work. I hung out the washing and hastily scrubbed out my taxi, and watered the conservatory, which last was my downfall.
The conservatory has had an outbreak of greenfly. There were so many that as I was watering things they rose off in little clouds as they tried to make themselves scarce.
Some of them landed on my face.
I brushed them off, but by the time I had finished my face was scarlet and sore, and I have concluded that perhaps I am allergic to greenfly poo.
It is still sore even now, and I am relieved that it has gone dark, because my face is the colour of a tiresomely malfunctioning traffic light.
I squirted the remaining greenfly with a vengeful malevolence.
I suppose it has spared me the need for a heatwave.
I am a post-heatwave colour already.
