IT'S LIKE A HEAT-WAVE

The baking sun turns my grass to straw. The four huge deciduous trees in my back garden block out all the light and already the lawn resembles a soccer pitch that has seen a particularly severe winter. I refer here to Blyth Spartans, rather than Old Trafford. For the hundredth time I wander around to the front of the house to see if the baby starling, encamped in the ventilation hole above the internal garage, has flown away yet, to allow me to get on with some work in there. It hasn’t, and it stares complacently out, showing no sign of wanting to stretch its wings. An array of seeds on the ground in front of the garage demonstrate what it has turned down for breakfast. We had to smash away the plastic vent cover because we feared it could never get out through the broken slats. We reasoned that it was easier getting into the nest from the outside in than leaving it from the inside out. The father starling sits in next door’s cherry tree, screeching and squawking, and then, by way of variety, making a noise like a telephone ringing, to warn its offspring that the big, bad, dishevelled man who works at the bottom of the garden wants him for his dinner. Starling jr peers out with a sleepy eye, totally unconcerned.
I retrieve the sweeping brush and begin sweeping the back terrace, which is covered in blossom and fruits from the two Norwegian Maple trees, which along with the horse-chestnut and oak, are well over 80 feet high and constantly disgorging blossom, twigs, leaves, branches, fruit, seeds and flowers. Even as I sweep up, more blossom rains down on my head. It is as if I were in the middle of a ticker-tape parade on Pennsylvania Avenue, New York, if indeed such a street exists, constantly picking bits of paper out of my hair.
I sit in the hot sunlight briefly and attempt to read, but it is too hot and too uncomfortable, so I seek the shade of the back garden. I cannot concentrate on my book, because of the cacophony of noise surrounding me. In the trees a magpie cackles, a rook caws and in the sky, several seagulls decide on some aerial dynamics that are accompanied by their melancholy wailing, delivered at ninety decibels. The bloke over the way is sawing with a hand-saw, and has been for about three days. He must be building an ark for when it rains. Across the street a large compressor is working away from the back of a van, providing the power for a neighbour to have his roof cleaned. At least two other folk are operating power lawn-mowers, petrol-driven, a nonsense when their gardens are no bigger than cricket squares. The chap next door is cleaning his conservatory roof with a yard brush, and I snap my book shut with a gesture of annoyance, for it seems that I can get no peace or privacy. I wander into the house but the heat is stifling, unbearable.
I end up driving to the coast, air conditioning on full blast despite the damage to the ozone layer. One thing is for certain, no matter how hot it is inland, it is always freezing at the coast. And so it proves. Clad only in teeshirt and shorts, it is too much for me so I have to drive back home again, and so it goes on. They say the weather is going to break on Wednesday. Roll on Wednesday.