Back

Back to work, so I’ve been. And of course, generally one for doing things the difficult way, I’m right back in by far the busiest time of year. So: in on Sunday 11-5; yesterday 9:30-3:30; today 9:30-3pm. And that’s less than half the amount I’d normally have done at this stage of the summer school. Ah well.

It does mean I get to avoid Das Discoboat though, which is always a bonus, and all the tedious receptions and parties etc., and just get to go home instead. Certainly I’ve been Moodling away at home, but that’s not so bad; I can do it when Frasier‘s on, for instance. At least this is the interesting time of year: no time-intensive admissions process; no multitudinous phone calls; no endless email enquiries. I get to see actual people: bumfluffed young Russian men and their glamourous female counterparts; be-flip-flopped American college students; angry middle-aged Portuguese; confused Indian chaps with names like Butt and Icarus. And a Babatunde! It’s been a long time since I last met a Babatunde in a professional context.

Emit remmus

It’s the spring time now, but you’d be fooled into thinking its a glorious summer’s day today. This lunchtime I thought I’d leave the office for a change (yesterday I worked right through to make up for an extra hour taken to go to the park with my 21-month-old niece, but that’s a different story) and pootled up to Lincoln’s Inn. I eschewed the Fields, overrun with Holborn types eating their sushi and expensive crisps in favour of Lincoln’s Inn itself. 

Sat on a bank looking towards the great sundial, I lay on my back reading in the mottled sunshine. The cloudless sky was a vivid blue and almost indigo through the half-unfurled leaves of the looming London Plane. The grounds were less busy than the Fields, and despite the abundance of lawyers, the stresses and cares of a troubled world could have been a million miles away.

I ate my sandwiches and bought an ice cream, and lay back to enjoy the late April sun, content that my day was productive, my lunch hour was well spent, and given that I’m no longer allowed to take lunches as paid overtime in the summer, I vowed that I would return, hell or high water.

All very idyllic, throwing the junkies and queens of Last Exit To Brooklyn into sharp relief.

Style gurus

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I don’t understand fashion. Why is it that people have to have different clothes each year? Why does something from last year look funny now? I get affected by it even, although I’ve no idea how – jeans tucked into boots does look a little funny, although it was accepted practice not that long ago.

I mention this because summer has hit London, and out come the party frocks, and they’re all this kind of 50′s styled, flouncy Kate Nash-looking business. Here’s the dilemma: is this fashionable? I’ve seen these around for ages, so is this still hip or are all the people I’m seeing behind the times? I wonder if there’s a specific age when one turns into a dad, even without children. I don’t know. Having assessed my own appearance, I’m a leather jacket and an unseasonal hat away from Indiana Jones, so I’m approximately 70 years behind the times. Nice.

More of what I mean at Annie Mole‘s excellent LU Fashion Victims set, from whence came today’s fashion icon.

It’s too ‘ot.

Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum

In a rare outbreak of good taste, a regular contender in Facebook’s Top Five London Books is Harper Lee’s wonderfully evocative To Kill A Mockingbird. And no moment of the book is more evocative than this depiction of the Deep Southern heat.

As I write, London is baking in its fifth successive day of sunshine, cloudless skies and mid 20′s heat. While the debate will rage over whether this is BoJo’s doing, or whether the weather is playing a cruel trick at our expense, it’s unseasonably hot here, and collars are indeed melting. I’ve become accustomed to a certain degree of stickiness in every bit of me, and in everything I touch. Unusually, it has more to do with the heat than with residue of belgian buns.

So I’m in the comparative cool of the office, not relishing leaving for once. I’ve been drinking all day (water, you understand) and I feel ready to face the world but… everything’s so much effort, isn’t it? Work’s too much effort, not working is too much effort. Accursed lethargy.

So is this to do with global warming? I like to run with a sensationalist over-dramatisation every now and then, so I’m going to assume: yes. I have to confess, there are times when global warming seems a little bit distant to my life, and easily pretendable that it’s just not there. But I can’t deny that the summers are hotter these days, the winters are milder, the bananas are growing in Tottenham, soon cactus will be outdoor plants… It’s inevitable, and all our fault. It’s also easy to pass climate change off as a little irrelevant – I live on high ground, I’m not going to suffer - but in actual fact, living in this western, affluent apathy is probably going to ruin the lives of the world’s most vulnerable: those in Bangladesh, Norfolk, etc.

So I have my compost bin, I have the recycling box, I don’t use the ‘extra spin’ button on the washing machine… But surely there’s more I can do? Could I give up my car? Could I offset my carbon emissions (whatever that means)? Do I have to be vegetarian? I hope not. I’m sure I can do something though – if this keeps up I’m going to have to don the Colonel’s white suit and start mopping my brow out of habit.