The Heat is On (Da na na na na, na na na na na)

Ziggy and I are upside down on the bathroom floor, the coolest place in the house, deeply absorbed in some Zen contemplation of the ceiling. He grunts when I pat him because even the slightest movement upsets the arrangement of his limbs, splayed just so to ensure maximum heat loss, which he has spent all week perfecting. When he tires of this he will range from room to room, settling nowhere for more than a minute and a half. But when he's here, every so often I must pat him to make sure he hasn't just boiled to death and become stuck in his macabre feline yoga pose.

I love, love my home town, but I wasn't built for it. English blood, you see.

I can cheerfully put up with a steering wheel that burns blisters into my palms, water taps that give out equal measures of liquid and ants and glasses that fog up should you be foolhardy enough to venture out of the airconditioning. I have learned to put my T-shirts in the freezer and keep a supply of rolled socks next to the bed ready to hurl at the pedestal fan when it starts shrieking at 3 in the morning. I know that the second I've dried myself off from my shower I am going to start sweating again and will put up with that infuriating salty trickle down the backs of my knees. But I hate the twitch the heat gives me, the involuntary impatience and the unnerving sensation that my brain is melting Brie.

I love the suffocating heat of the car when you open the door for the first time in the morning, but I'm living for the fury of the summer storms that cool the fever, turn the grass a phosporescent green and wash the air with sepia.