Photo by Michael at https://www.flickr.com/photos/msvg/5994891327

By the time you read this, the heatwave in the south of England may have come to an end (fingers crossed) I don’t mind heat when I’m on holiday (up to a point) but it can be very uncomfortable in a city, especially when it doesn’t cool down much at night. First up, here’s a poem by John Stammers: he’s a London poet (born in Islington no less), and this made me chuckle.

Like A Heatwave Burning
by John Stammers

It was the hottest summer on record;
we flew into rages at the drop of a pin.
The heat made cacti of us all.

I woke up hot crazy at one in the morning.
The day’s sun had heated up the sky so heavy
it felt like being ironed.

We sat on the curbside like hot bananas
and Jane read me the Miranda
of our future lives together:

there would be no future lives together.
I’d never heard the nightjay squawk
so damnably shrilly in the
still, still stilly.

My eyeballs made sinuous rills.
I sloughed on my sandals and loped
onto a streetcar named expire.

Tyres welded cars to the road.
I got out my character
and began the tasks of a lifetime.

Pine trees collapsed in a dead swoon
all over the place. Believe you me,
honeydew features, it was hot.

And as a special treat, here’s Ella Fitzgerald, with ‘It’s Too Darn Hot’. As indeed it is.