Summer heat and the return of the magic...

It's been unbearably hot. I've even seen a stag beetle, a sign of summer and schooldays if ever there was one. Except that summer kind of started early this year: in May, but now, in June, it's been extremely hot, up there in the mid-to-late thirties, there have been red warnings, we're all being advised not to travel unless it was absolutely necessary, making me wonder whether anybody travels just for the hell of it, to some random railway station, perhaps, for a quick coffee and then the return ride. No, most people are going somewhere to do something, nearly always work, but visiting relatives, friends, whatever, nobody travels for the hell of it.

A few days ago there was thunder and lightening and heat. I was lying on top of the bed when it started, early in the morning, it was still dark. The lightening flashed and the thunder crashed and I was reminded of people, or perhaps it was just one person, who told me that the longer the period between flash and crash the further away the storm was travelling, and sure enough, after a while, the storm blew over and was gone. Where it went I'll never know, perhaps over Sutton way where mum resides and I remembered how much she hated a storm when we were younger. I thought of her then, in the dead of night almost, the darkness still present, and wondered how she was coping.

As a child I always remember, on a stormy afternoon, back from school, looking at the front door and the crinkled glass window that gave little away as the late afternoon light faded. "The front door is jealous," I used to say to mum, having no idea what it could be jealous of or, indeed, whether a wooden door could even experience jealousy. It was a mad thought and still is. A jealous front door, it was up there in the scary stakes with the silhouette of the stairhead at night, when it turned into the Mug Dog, a cloaked dog-like figure that stood at the top of the stairs when we were supposed to be going to bed. Crazy, definitely. Childhood is strange, surreal almost and I never remember it being any other way; everything was in some way strange: the sea, the countryside, cows, flowerbeds, insects, agricultural machinery, nothing ever seemed real in the days when I didn't watch or listen to the news. It was a world of fairy tales and toy soldiers, hankerchief tents in the back garden, stories within stories and nothing anywhere near reality, not that I knew what reality was all about; in many ways I still don't although I'd say that's more wishful thinking than anything else.

The heat brings back memories of being young when every day of the school summer holidays was long and sun-baked. Long grass swirled in slow motion, trees swayed ominously at the edge of fields where sheep and cows stood motionless even as we passed them by in a train to the coast. If the cows were sitting down, said dad, then there might be rain; if they were standing up there would be sunshine. Invariably they stood up, rarely were they sitting down. Most of our summer holidays were bathed in sunshine and I recall early evening when the sun cooled and our toy soldiers were in their respective hotels (the bedside cabinets) and I was walking around barefoot in white trousers with a collared short-sleeved navy blue tee-shirt with a white anchor logo, looking out to sea, at low tide, long stretches of wet sand, the distant bark of dogs and my tingling, sun-burned body. Later I would sleep on top of the bed, my shirt sticking to my skin as I hoped the feeling would leave me by morning because my inflatable boat awaited me.

We all longed for a storm by the sea but all we really saw was distant lightning on the horizon and not the waves whipped into a frenzy by the wind, nobody in peril on the sea, a hymn I still find frightening in some way. I would not wish to find myself or anybody else in peril on the sea. I would sleep with the windows open so I could hear the sea throughout the night. It was magical and once you let the magic escape it rarely returns unless you find it, like I did, in a theme park in Holland. The Dream Flight. You either know it or you don't and I know. The magic is out there, in pockets, don't go looking for it because it will find you. I once found it, aged 12, on a milk round, in South Wallington of all places, and it's still there and I can find it today on my bike, the quiet, seemingly empty, large houses set back from the road, the hedgerows, the trees, swaying again, nobody around, and I can sail triumphantly through it and out the other side, reluctantly riding back into the real world.

It's 2239 as I write this and it's still hot. 24 degrees and it won't dip lower than 20 degrees before morning and then it will rise into the thirties again. I'm sipping from a mug of tap water that never quite comes out of the tap cold in this sort of heat. I'm putting off going to bed because it's going to be unpleasant, at least until I fall asleep, which I will, eventually. I'm wearing shorts and a black teeshirt with 'Future Inside' written across the front. Future Inside! 

I was listening to an old prog rock album, Octopus, by Gentle Giant, a band I only remember from a track (not on Octopus) called Free Hand. The Astronome disco at the Croydon Greyhound used to blare it out before the bands came on stage and for some reason I remembered it, found it on Spotify and listened to it, then discovering another track, Remember Me with Kindness, which I found mesmerising and that led me to key into Google the question: What is regarded as the best Gentle Giant album ever. Octopus was the answer and Remember Me with Kindness was on it, so here I am, alone, in the dark, just the halogen glow of the computer screen and the 24 degree heat outside.

My wife often tells stories about her childhood in India and the one that will always stick in my mind is when she told of how she and her family used to sleep on the roof in the extreme heat of summer. The beds were taken out on to a flat roof and they would lie there looking at the moon and the stars. Once again, it's the return of the magic, just when you thought you'd lost it.