British summer. In most situations those two words paired together form one of the most ridiculous oxymorons of the western world. The isles of Britannia don’t do summer. They do prolonged periods of seasonal disappointment interspersed at rare and fleeting intervals with what can only be described as a acts of meteorological cock-teasing. A summer in Britain is about rain, moaning about the rain and clomping through fields in big green wellies. By traditional standards it is not about temperatures that make the deserts of North Africa look positively chill by comparison. Last Monday, as the heat wave crested into its second week temperatures hit 33.5°C. Sun has come to Britain. The first heat wave since 2006. The hottest I remember it being in perhaps a decade. A summer that could even give the Summer of ’76 a run for its money.
I am melting…
Send help…
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Leave a comment | tags: Hot, July, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Sand Sea, Short stories, Summer, Weather, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing
On Wednesday I got a yearning. A yearning to be somewhere other; a yearning to get the world under my feet and to keep walking until I ran out of road. To get out into the country and lose myself in a place where there was no one else. Even at the height of noon, the sun was a wan and sickly thing, barely punching through the swaddling of fog and ice, the temperature never rising above zero. It was the kind of weather which leeches the colour out of everything and leaves the world a perfect glass twin of itself; another, more perfect world; a world where hedges are draped with a filigree with frozen cobwebs; were fat wood pigeons and collared doves peck at frozen earth and shaggy coated horses nibble at the knife blades of frost coated grass.
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Leave a comment | tags: An Unexpected Journey, Cold, Ice, Out and About, Ramblings, Walking, Weather, Yearning | posted in Ramblings
The Rogue Verbumancer 