Not wanting to make excuses for not adding new posts recently, but…

Sweet Jesus, I’ve been hot!

I’m not complaining, mind, I love the balmy weather.

We’re just not that good at dealing with decent weather in London. Air conditioning is catching on, but most homes don’t have it. Every year, for about a week Firstborn Son and Middle Child get all fired up about why I resolutely refuse to succumb to air con. (To paraphrase the 1992 american election slogan: It’s the ecology, stoopid). To be fair, it can get proper hot and their bedrooms get genuinely sultry. But it’s rarely more than a few days, and we have fans.

I keep telling myself this when I go to work on an unusually warm day. Because our building gets hot. Its numerous south-facing windows look out onto a busy, treeless, south London road. It has air conditioning, but only where our receptionist sits. And sometimes she gets so delightfully cool from said air con that she turns it off. The rest of us have fans. We are all experienced midwives. By which I mean we are too old to ever be cold! We are perma-hot! Our strict uniform policy (we get inspected regularly, like school children, it’s fun!) isn’t helpful.  Said uniform is 100% polyester: great value, easy care, as breathable as plastic. Plus we have to wear shoes and socks (because the teeny weeny butterfly needles we use to take blood, which we are trusted to handle with thinly gloved hands, could be lethal if they accidentally landed on our feet with all the force of a feather).

With fans on, windows open (never mind the angry beeping and sirens of London traffic) and doors open whenever privacy is not required (wishful thinking) we create just enough of a breeze to survive. We’re midwives, we’re pretty hard-core! At least we get to fully empathise with our pregnant clientele, who are having to be their baby’s climate control system.

But, whinging aside, my early morning cycle to work is glorious. The breeze as I whizz along the tree-lined avenue by the river never gets old. It’s light when I leave,  and light when I get home. Not having to look anxiously at the clouds, wondering if I’ll dodge a shower against all odds is a lovely break from London reality! The only teeny weeny downside is that I have to share the cycle lanes with a myriad of fair weather cyclists who disappear in winter. The journey home is muggy, but I like to think of it as my vitamin D replenishing system.

My park walks are also transformed from puddle-dodging, winter-swaddled, endurance-fast-march, to chillax stroll, stopping to smell the roses and cheer on the little ducklings. The trees are coiffed with luxuriant foliage, providing welcome shade while looking so much more majestic than their stark, wintery, skeletal selves.

My summer wardrobe makes its annual appearance… I have an optimistic number of pretty summer dresses, each of which gets worn once or twice a year. Many are quite old but most are still vibrant because they get washed as infrequently as they get worn. A lick of nail polish wakes my toes from winter hibernation, ready for the summery (but still sensibly flat, I’m too old for crazy) footwear.

Good hair weather, not gonna lie, is freakishly rare. If, like me, you live with frizz, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Rain is enemy number one, for sure, but getting hot and sweaty also causes tendrils of unruly curls to appear uninvited. The conundrum occurs when using heat to tame the frizz when you’re already hot. It’s a zero sum game!

My nursery of indoor plants needs tending to. I can’t lie: my baby conker trees aren’t exactly thriving, I’m gonna have to ask Google about that. But the orchids love the sun and keep flowering enthusiastically as long as I keep them well hydrated. My baby date palm (grown from a Tesco’s finest date stone) can convince itself that it’s in Egypt and keep throwing up new fronds. My baby citrus trees (grown from the pips of a Tesco’s lemon) can pretend they’re in a sun-drenched Mediterranean country for a couple of weeks, as can my fledgling pomegranates (you guessed it, from the pips gleaned from the supermarket fruit).

The cat is sunning herself in the hottest bedroom she can find, dreaming of the land of her birth. She’s French. She wouldn’t want air conditioning!

Thanks to the long, long  summer holidays, the kids and the cat now share the same circadian rhythm and general MO. They are all very sleepy during the day, they all get fed regularly, they complain unanimously that the food is sub parr and the rations are insufficient (at least the cat has been known to bring home the mice when the protein content of my offering is inadequate) and there’s usually a small spike of activity in the evening and into the night. We have lively discussions about who should cook on the days that I’m working (me, 4 against one, if you include the sodding ungrateful cat); when I’m not working (me, obviously); when I’m not there (yup, still me, I’m magic, remember?) We entertain ourselves with games of ‘guess how much food there actually is in this kitchen’ which I always win because I’m the only one who can see it. We also jest about who should do the washing when I’m at work (I bet you can guess!)

I know, I’m a moaning myrtle. I keep being told I should suck it up and just pretend I’m now living a house share. Just do my own cooking and washing, and let my grown up kids do their own chores. Here’s the thing: I kindly drove to Bath to collect Firstborn Son’s stuff from his university digs. Let’s not even stop to wonder why he needed a chauffeur. Point is, it was yukky. Even he doesn’t want to live with people like him. It’s pretty grim when everyone does the bare minimum and teamwork is not a thing. It’s much nicer to live in the family home, which seems to come with a household fairy. But this mythical winged domesticated creature (who did it all when the kids were small, because they couldn’t, and who isn’t asking her grown up progeny to aquire magical status, merely for the luxury of ditching her own sodding fairy/doormat status) has had enough. If they keep insisting on magical, I’m gonna be manifesting as an ogre from now on.

Long live the summer!

Which I love.

Mostly.