Dave Wiseman; just a first attempt at a style akin to a lyrical essay?
‘It’s so hot’! ‘It’s boiling’! ‘It’s like an oven out there’. What is it with the British relationship to heat? We swarm to the Med for the great heat but we moan about it being too hot, as soon as it gets above 80F (27C) in our own country.
I always loved heat, when I was younger. I remember my first three weeks in Spain in 1964 on a white beach fringed with thick pines near Sitges, needles on the ground, fragrant pine at night with a huge moon, as we camped out in our little pup tent, best friend Nigel and I shared. I got brown as a berry that summer, always loving it but never went back until I was in my mid twenties.
Heat can be dry or moist. I hated it too moist. Think Skye, a few years on in my youth in our family caravan, a sky black spotted with biting midges at dusk. That less fragrant smell of those ever present tiger moon coils. Now living in Almeria, that hot moisture is a known sparring partner.
Then of great heat in London; a Queens’ Jubilee summer at Kew Observatory, watching lawns being cut by handsome gardeners, tops off. Desire hanging in the limpid air, sense of doubt, sense of unease, sense of being weighed down by the heat. Hot days with records being broken, brown grass, gorse fires, shimmering tarmac, thunder cracking, the smell ahead of oncoming moisture, the relief of pattering, splotching, huge dropped rain. And long would she reign over us.
And developing such a great love of heat accompanied by a strong wind, whipping over you, sitting silently looking over the cliffs above S’Arany towards Ibiza Town, on the enchanted Balearic isle. Imagining, dreaming of sitting waiting for your love to return from the foaming warm sea: fishermen out on the ocean, spotting red, white six second flashing lighthouse; identifying safety. Capturing it, writing it all down on the hot paper, hot off the press.
Dry sauna heat, then wet heat in the steam room; smell of menthol, of wood, warm skin, so hot. So hot! Desire, expire, perspire, … then into an icy cold plunge pool, before starting the process again.
Cycling through Andalucian spanish heat, through its pools of heat in spring, then at night,and in sun and shade. Fast, faster, fastest downhill.. brushing sun dried, hot crisped leaves and vegetation aside. Sounds all muffled by wind, tight half lidded eyes narrowed to the route ahead. Concentration, exhalation, bifurcation, perspiration.
Yes, on reflection I love heat. When everything and anything is possible.
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