Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

Now I know summer is on its way in. We have had two warm days in succession and I am already wilting and croaky with pollen-related sniffles and such like. I always assumed that as I got older I would discover new interests and pass times. I did not anticipate these manifesting themselves in collecting hay fever pills and ensuring that I remain well stocked with disposable hankies.

I guess the protective layer of tar is well removed from my lungs and other tubing now, so there is nothing between my pipes and the outside world, so here I am: Sir Sniffle of Congestion.

Be that as it may, I am beginning to think that I should put away the black jeans and the tweed jacket (it’s not as if, hand on heart, they match anyway, though I have never let anything as paltry as colour co-ordination ruin my day) and dig out instead the chinos and pale jacket. The irony of course, is that I have donated my panama hat to the charity shop, so a proper Sydney Greenstreet impression is out of the question. That said, I do have a rather tatty, though better fitting panama rolled up in the bedroom drawer or somewhere.

However it turns out, I shall have to think of ways of remaining cool on my way to and from work every day. This is a lesson I have to relearn every year since my memory discards everything useful on the subject as soon as temperatures start to decline and I can gratefully clutch at a jumper and over coat. I pointed out to colleagues that I like the temperatures of winter, but with the daylight of summer. One of them suggested that I want my cake and eat it.

Yes. With cherries on top, please.

So the gritters are out, are they? You have probably seen it on the news in one form or another, but I thought I'd record it here for posterity, or my dotage, or weblog obsolescence, whichever comes first.

UK roads are, like the wicked witch, melting. Tar, like gooey black mozzarella is sticking to tyres and feet and stringing out behind and below. Lovely. It is also the wrong kind of heat for trains (most weather conditions are the wrong type for trains), as tracks buckle and trains are forced top slow down or divert.

The water companies are complaining that there's not enough rain and that we are in drought conditions. At the same time, it's not their fault that the water reserves we do have are seeping away because the old Victorian pipes can't take it any more¹. It's not their fault that they are making record profits and paying handsome dividends. There's nothing left for maintenance. It's not their fault.

I'm no socialist, but back in the '80s when the utilities we supposedly already owned were being sold back to us, I couldn't see the logic (other than as a short-term idea to raise money for the Treasury so that the Thatcher years could be funded at low tax rates). Each of the privatised services is in a mess, and each is kicking out massive profits with little reinvestment - except the trains which seem to be getting worse with massive investment.

We seem to have forgotten how to run the country and judging by the temperatures, Hell is doing the subcontracting.

Edited to add: I'd forget my head if'n it wasn't bolted on. In addition to the melting roads, I meant to mention that the Thames is drying up. The first fifteen miles from the source down stream are now dry, dusty flatbeds. So drought, over extraction and wastage. Hurrah.

¹In London alone, Thames Water are running billboard adverts boasting that the work they are doing will save the equivalent of the GLA building full of water from being lost every 12 hours. Just how much water is being lost?

Attention shirt makers!

There is a gap in the market which you are conspicuously failing to fill: shirts with darker backs than fronts. Especially useful in the summer for the city dweller when it is too hot to wear a jacket to work so everything gets bundled into a rucksack instead. These are the days when the public transport system heaters are set to full power and the windows jammed shut. The sun will also shine a little.

In short, it will be hot, even when the sun ain’t shining.

Normal shirts can’t cope. The back, whether you are wearing a jacket or no, carrying a rucksack or no, the back will get moist, perhaps even slick¹. Now it would be so simple to hide this annoying and uncomfortable fact if shirts were made available on which the back panel was of a darker hue than the front. The hideous reality of modern urban life would be hidden from unwary eyes.

While I’m at it, shirts with self-fragrancing arm pits. Think about it.

¹I do apologise for using such language this time of day, particularly the former of the two words, but sometimes it just has to be said. And since I’ve said it once, I shall use the forbidden word again: moist. (May as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb).

Is it the done thing to be world weary on a Tuesday morning, after a long weekend?

I rather hope it is, because that's the position I'm in at the moment. Summer has returned, and brought with it the disruption of regular sleep patterns thanks largely to the heat¹ it is liberally dumping on us. Happily, a lot of people seem still to be on holiday as the tube was very empty this morning, so it was only vile, not completely unbearable.

Six months after the move, I still haven't perfected the concept of reading on the tube ride each morning and evening. In the morning, I'm happier to sit and doze for a half hour before panicking that I've missed my change at Euston. In an evening, I am generally too busy attempting to keep my face out of other people's day-old armpits to concentrate, and by the time the train is empty enough to sit down, typically East Finchley, or Finchley Central, all motivation to engage with the written word has been subsumed by the need for fresh, deodorant and sweat free air.

Mmm. Nice.

If ever I win a decent sum on the National Lottery, or Lotto as they have re-christened it in an attempt to soak further money from our pockets,I shall hire a a couple of punka-wallahs to follow the sahib around and keep his vast imperial bulk cool in all temperatures over about 75^o. Of course if I win enough, I shall just move in to a turreted and ivy-clad mansion equipped with ice-cold air conditioning, and spend my days slicing golf balls through the conservatory window from the inside with a nine iron.


¹This is British heat and should in no way be confused with your fancy foreign heat. We get far more annoyance with far fewer degrees than do you. Think of it as an efficiency saving.