Thursday

The weather is rapidly becoming brilliant this week - the sun is out and the forecast is for something like a proper heatwave at the weekend. As ever, the sun being out causes the office to heat up to a point approaching the unbearable; there is an air conditioning unit of sorts there but it makes a noise like an abused oil tanker and makes so little effect on the temperature of the room that it's almost sarcastic. It probably cost thousands of pounds as well. Instead I stick on the fan on my desk for the first time this year and make do with a simulation of properly-circulating air. All any of us are aware of is the hum (both audible and olfactory) of hot computers whirring away at each other in the dust. Lovely.

Happily, there is a barbecue planned at Ant's tonight - at which I've arranged to meet K armed with booze by 7.30. I grab some wine and beer on the way home from work and have a couple of drinks before I head out, dancing around the kitchen giddily to circa-2001 UK rock bands on Spotify and even drinking a refreshing JD and coke so as not to use up all the beer. I wander over to Crouch End in the heat just after 7 (having switched to shorts for the occasion) and am more or less the first person there. We get the barbie going and people drift among us in the garden where we sit and chat until around 11 when an aggravated neighbour pops his head over the fence and suggest we knock the party on the head for the evening.

We take the neighbour's advice and K and I wander home, tired and bloated. It's starting to feel a bit like summer, this.