It's July

Notes from a hot summer

I’m ready to start this year off again, and I’m hoping that the trails of the past six months are not to be repeated in the next. But in any case, it’s the summer, and there are lots of good things about it.

Things I hate about summer: the heat. The exhausting, enervating heat, and the relentless sun which is no friend to the fair-skinned.

Things I love about summer: summer fruit! Melons! Peaches! Nectarines! as well as salads laden down with basil, mint, and baby spinach leaves. Getting dressed takes two minutes (don’t even think about wearing unnatural fibres - when its really hot, you know all that crap about breathable man-mad fibres is rubbish. You need linen, cotton, and maybe silk. Believe me, this IS my specialist subject). Summer dressing in general now that I have my wardrobe licked. Falling out of bed and into the shower without strategically pre-heating the bathroom. Just getting out of bed without having to think about layers. Knowing it will be hot and planning accordingly. Summer rain and summer storms. Not being in a work schedule, and having the luxury of just thinking, Oh, I’m tired, I’ll go to bed now. Being able to hang out with my granddaughter whenever we feel like it.

We read, we draw, we play, we build beds out of cushions and covers on the sofa.

Wednesday morning I went to buy flowers, and the woman in the flower shop said, it’s too hot, they won’t last. But I decided to take my chances, so I have a sparse looking bouquet in water in a vase, and flower heads and eucalyptus drying in a jug. This is when an actual garden, with flowers grown for cutting, would be very pleasant. I had gone to the house to have breakfast with my mother, then I went upstairs to wake Ella up. I managed to whisk her into her clothes and out of the house in record time, so that we were on our way to the pasticceria for breakfast, hats firmly on our heads, before the sun was too high. Breakfast completed, we kept walking until we got to the flower shop, which was miraculously open (food shops in my town open at 8.30, non-food shops never seem to be open when I am out shopping, and I’m not going to go out again, particularly when its too hot). We were upstairs, in my flat, by 9.30, which is my cut-off point for going out in the summer.

I mean, it’s not the perkiest bunch of flowers I’ve ever seen.

A little while ago I bought A Necklace of Raindrops to read to Ella. I thought I might have to wait a bit, as she’s still very much at the picture book stage (although honestly, everyone should always be at that stage), and while this is famously incredibly beautifully illustrated by Jan Pienkowski, there aren’t that many pictures. Joan Aiken is one of my favourite children’s authors, and I have copies of most of her other books waiting in the wings (Nightbirds on Nantucket is one of my all time most-loved books). Last Saturday morning when she was still quite sleepy I started reading to her, and she loved the idea of just leaning against my shoulder and listening, so she requested the same again (current favourite, The Cat Sat on the Mat¹), and then I tried her with a bit of The Little Bookroom, Eleanor Farjeon’s gorgeous collection of stories, illustrated by Edward Ardizzone.

We read The Lady’s Room, which was the first story my daughter read on her own, possibly because she knew it off by heart: it’s a little tale that feels very pertinent to now, as it’s all about the constant desire for change and newness, when all you end up with is emptiness. That’s the message, but if you are obsessed with interiors, as my daughter and I are, we always read it purely for the decor. The lady starts out with a pure white room, and then she looks outside and sees the spring, and wants a green room. In summer she wants a pink room, followed by an autumnal golden room, and then in winter she wants a black room and the fairy who grants her wishes loses the plot and has a tantrum and the lady is left in darkness with no walls or roof or beautiful coverlet or curtains or carpet. We would ignore the messaging, and instead dream of the soft furnishings.

Thursday morning, I’m woken by a storm. The electricity went off at some point during the night, but now it’s back on, and thunder is rumbling across. By the time I’ve got up and made tea and coffee, we’re in it. Thunder, lightning, rain, and - sounding like someone is pouring a continuous stream of little stones on the roof - hail. It hails quite a lot in Italy, and the hailstones are very often as big as pebbles. Millions of years ago, when I used to run, I would sometimes get caught in a hailstorm and would have to run with my hands up to protect my face, which was neither fun nor safe. Right now, while I am writing this, I am remembering that my incredibly useful absolutely rainproof coat is at my daughter’s house, where it has been for months, and I have promised to make family dinner, and have approximately no food at all in the house which could feed more than one person. Realistically, I know it’s July in Italy, and soon the storm will have vanished and we won’t even remember it ever happened, but while the storm is going on, with attendant sound effects, it is hard to believe it will ever not be going on.

And now that I’ve finished writing the above, it is all over, and if it wasn’t for the courtyard downstairs looking a bit damp, you’d never know it had happened. It’s boiling hot, and I plan on making lasagne because why wouldn’t you want to spend a hot day cooking? I’m not sure what I will put in them, I’ll see what is available and inspiring.

It’s hot in Italy right now, but it’s the summer, it’s always hot, and it will be hot for months. People go out and do their food shopping and dog walking early in the morning, and nobody is outside in the sun during the warmest time of the day. Heat alerts are issued regularly. I’m grateful that Italy has embraced air-conditioning more than some of the other European countries: a lot of public places amd public transport have it, as do more and more private residences. When I put AC units into my attic flat twenty-five years ago, some of the other residents muttered about it, but the muttering has now stopped, and most of the building now has it. This is why, traditionally, the cities would become wastelands in the summer - it wasn’t just people going on holiday, it was people going on holiday to the sea or the lakes or the mountains because living in the city in the heat was untenable. Out here in the country, by a forest and a lake, it’s always cooler than Rome, but it still gets damn hot, and there are no cool evening breezes anywhere right now. Afternoons are just taken out of the equation: the liveable hours are early in the morning, and in the evening.

I would like to have spent some of this time, the long summer holidays, travelling, but I’m still in limbo about my treatment, waiting to be called to meet with the oncologist. It’s not a stressful limbo, but it’s still limbo, in the heat. But I am not actually complaining, even if it sounds as though I am. I am pretty content.

1. When I was looking up Eleanor Farjeon to link to her, I discovered that she had written a story called Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard. In Joan Aiken’s story The Cat Sat on the Mat, the heroine is called Emma Pippin, and she lives outside an apple orchard.