Hot & Sticky Day

A HOT & STICKY DAY GASPS SWELTERINGLY TO ITS END. It is humid! And who are these people in Australia saying it's so dry you've literally got static charges crackling off idle household appliances? That is unreal, man! I would gladly swop a quotient of our moisture for your dry. Just don't let the mouse spiders and funnel webs scuttle over during the exchange ...

I was just thinking back in time ... My friend Marilyn was reminiscing earlier about the old butler sinks we used to get in every kitchen and how, when her old kitchen was modernized and the sink ripped out, the builders gave her first whack at it with the mighty great mallet of destruction! She bashed it with such relish, so she said. So she's horrified to see such sinks coming back into yuppie fashion!! I was telling her how I recall standing up in one of those sinks in my grandparents' old kitchen in Windsor utterly starkers and unashamed. And also young enough to be batheing in a kitchen sink in the first place! How old was I, I wonder..? Now Marilyn says that not very far up the main road there's one of those sinks on sale, in a yuppie antique fixtures shop, for £1,200!

Thinking back to childhood reminds me of the great drought of 1976. That is the only true extended spell of hot, dry weather I have gone through in my life - when summer was hot enough truly to dry out the climate into Mediterranean or California-like conditions. I was only four! I still remember walking with my Mum and Dad through the blackened, crackling, charred, still-smouldering remnants of a heath-fire and how radiantly hot the ashy, blackened logs still were, days later ...

The waters of our local reservoir, which was called Lady Bower, receded so very much that the church tower and rooves of the poor village that had been sacrificed for this manmade lake breathed fresh air for the first time in many years. And legend has it that the churchbells even rang ... Come to think of it - a submerged village, undemolished, wouldn't that make for the best diving..?? I've done scuba diving in my youth and let me tell you it is truly surreal. Nearest thing you'll ever get in this lifetime to actual human flight. Amazing. But let me tell you something about wet-suits. Yes they work. Wonderfully. The bit they don't tell you though is how slowly that icy water trickles into your every part and cavity! Gradually, freezingly. It will not be rushed. Then amazingly - with precisely the same principle as a feathery quilt on a cold night - one's own body heat brings it to a comfortable room temperature.

I wonder why it is that the British subaqua fits a Dungeons and Dragons colour scheme of greeny greys and browns and duns. Whereas an old friend of mine from Barbados said literally you stick your head under the water on the Carribbean sea-side and a rainbow of life is moving before your eyes in every direction! Does ultraviolet light breed all that colour? I'm not an evolutionist I believe God created everything, but still I don't understand why the tropics are so much more colourful than this temperate land of mine ...

Well, it is approaching 10:30 pm. The "cool of the day" is upon us - about as cool as it will get. I hear an aeroplane coming in to land; another reminder of Windsor, which is right under the flightpath of London's main international airport. Her Majesty the Queen must get that all the time when "one" is in residence at Windsor Castle - in my view that is her most amazing home.

I was shocked to see in the Sunday Mirror Carol Malone or some similar dimwit columnist actually standing up for flash snapper Annie Liebowitz and slanging into the Queen! I'm sorry but no-one but no-one tells our Queen to take off her crown and gets away with it. Perish the very idea!

And on that thought I'll love yer and leave yer.

Still with a home. Whoever prayed for me. it worked. Thanks to you.

But thanks most of all to God Almighty.

Wahey!!

***

I have the lyrics to T'pau's 1987 hit single China in Your Hand going round and round and round my head!

These are them, borrowed from http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gary.hart/lyricst/tpau.html
and, I might add, totally unaltered by me!

If you want to see the video/hear the song, click here and my music blog will provide all ...

It was a theme she had
On a scheme he had
Told in a foreign land

To take life on earth
To the second birth
And the man was in command

It was a flight on the wings
Of a young girl's dreams
That flew too far away!

Don't push too far
Your dreams are china in your hand
Don't wish too hard
Because they may come true
And you can't help them
You don't know what you might
Have set upon yourself

China in your hand

Come from greed
Never born of the seed
Took life from a barren land
Oh! Eyes wide
Like a child in the form of man
A prophecy for a fantasy
A castle in his mind!

Don't push too far
Your dreams are china in your hand
Don't wish too hard
Because they may come true
And you can't help them
You don't know what you might
Have set upon yourself

China in your hand
In your hand, your hand

Don't push too far
Your dreams are china in your hand
Don't wish too hard
Because they may come true
And you can't help them
You don't know what you might
Have set upon yourself
You shouldn't push too hard, no no
Don't push too far
Your dreams are china in your hand
Don't wish too hard
Because they may come true
And you can't help them
You don't know what you might
Have set upon yourself

OK I tinkered with the punctuation a little bit. I hate missing apostrophe's (or one's in the wrong places). And I couldnt resist adding a couple of exclamation marks!!