In July
Summer is a matter of adaptation
Retreat Tier Note: Our next retreat will take place on Saturday 12th July, 4pm - 7pm UK time. Log-on details are here.
I am currently recovering from Glastonbury. Not that I attended the festival, you understand; God forbid. I am recovering from the mere idea that the festival was taking place on the same landmass as me. It’s a hangover from the time that I thought I might have to go one day, in order to keep up my up-for-anything act. I spent a lot of time imagining how I’d cope with either the mud or the blazing sun, the noise and the lack of sleep, the experience of waking up hungover in a tent and being surrounded by people who haven’t washed. It’s left me ghoulishly obsessed.
Watching the coverage from the safe confines of the sofa, H remarked that everyone has a window of time when they’d love Glastonbury; it’s just that his window has now passed.
‘When was mine?’ I asked him.
‘Yeah, fair enough,’ he said. ‘You never had one.’
It’s not really Glastonbury’s fault. I am constitutionally unsuited to the summer. I grew up in a family of olive-skinned sun-worshippers who loved nothing more than roasting under the July blaze. I - pale, prone to overheating - came to dread the hottest months, which were a strange combination of boring and dangerous. In the days before the world agreed on the necessity of a high SPF, a dose of sunburn was thought to toughen up the skin. Summer was a tortuous process of burning and peeling, getting stung by various insects, and bristling with prickly heat rash. I came to fear it.
I think I’m gradually getting better at enduring July, though. It helps to live by the sea, where there is a cooling high tide twice a day, if I manage to catch it. I’ve stopped worrying what people think of my luminous white legs and started wearing shorts, and it’s a revelation. My garden is planted for shade, and I spend as much time as I can outdoors and under a parasol. I have a fridge with an ice dispenser, and I own many, many tower fans. In moments of extreme need - i.e. three times a day - I can stand under a cold shower and think chilly thoughts. Summer is a matter of adaptation.
In every third interview I do, I am asked if I’ll ever write ‘Summering’. Not likely, friends. It would be 200 pages of me moaning about mosquito bites. But these fiery months do enforce a kind of slowness that I quite like. It’s impossible to do anything fast; you must surrender. All of life’s mundane processes must be shortcut. Lunchtime naps are inevitable. A glass of water feels like a gift from the angels.
There are worse things, all told. Welcome to July.
Thank you for your continued kindness and patience in the aftermath of H’s operation. He’s doing well - and in fact, he got the all-clear last week. He celebrated with a can of orange San Pellegrino. But healing from such a major operation is long, slow work and he’s at the stage now where all the big steps have been taken. Now, it’s weeks and weeks of being tired all the time, in pain, and a bit hazy due to all the different drugs.
Big illness is a narrative problem. After a while, you’re telling the same old story to the people who check in. Yes: still pretty much confined to the house. My news? Oh well, I finished all of 'Star Trek Enterprise’, and I’ve moved on to ‘Voyager’. No, I still can’t come to dinner; I get exhausted if I’m upright for more than 30 minutes. Sorry. Try me again in a month.
Nothing is going wrong here; this is the process happening as it should. It feels incredibly slow when you’re living it, though.
Thanks for bearing with me while I’m not running on full power!
The Next Book Club Read
I’m continuing to take things easy in July, but August’s Book Club read will be a (hopefully) fun deviation from the norm: ‘Lolly Willowes’ by Sylvia Townsend Warner. Yes, it’s fiction, but it’s summer and I’m feeling rebellious.
Hopefully that gives you plenty of time to get hold of a copy and/or download the audiobook!
We’re not skipping Derek Jarman - we’ll return to him in the autumn. We were orignally working with the trust that looks after his former home, and we’re just trying to rearrange that. Watch this space!
My Recent Posts
My Week in Pictures - after the solstice
Journaling prompt - giving and receiving care
Forthcoming Dates
Wednesday 16th July: Cork Literary Festival
July Essentials
Brazilian Limonda, which contains both lime and condensed milk, making it a balanced meal IMHO
Max Alexander’s knitted moth art
The summer solstice is a ‘celestial starting gun’ for trees
Boody bamboo undershorts. My thighs need never meet again.
Cherries from Terry’s Cherries, an East Kent summer institution
David Sedaris, making me look like an angel by comparison
The Moomins don’t want you to pee in the sea
The books of Gretel Erlich - if she’s new to you, start with ‘The Solace of Open Spaces’
I bought H some Irregular Sleep Pattern PJs for his hospital stay, and I can honestly say they brought him joy in a hard time. Which feels like a big claim for sleepwear, but I stand by it.
Take care,
Katherine
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I completely get your un-excitement about summer, I feel the same way. I want to run away to South America and/or Scandinavia during these months, I miss the days during my tween years when the warmest it would ever get was 25 Celsius. In fact, I’ve just ordered a copy of “A Woman in the Polar Night” as I see now as the perfect time to catch up with the book club. 🥶
Sending you cooling breezes, lovely K. I do think one of the hardest parts of long illness is how it traps you in a groundhog day of the same stories over and over. It can make you feel so grey and boring while the rest of the world rushes on in full technicolour. It shares much with grief in that way, and arrives as its own grief too. Hurray hurray for the all clear and sending you both so much love and understanding for all the healing and patience and difficulty still in process xx