Someone recently told me that the small, vivid green exotic birds which flit past our balcony are possible descendants of the illegal avians of a famous musician who had once lived in London. I forget who said it, or which famous musician it might have been, but I am inclined to blind belief despite an overwhelming lack of factual evidence. There goes the great-great-great-granddaughter of James Brown’s bird, I think to myself, as she swoops into the cherry tree with a flash of serpentine.
Amidst the ongoing European heatwave, even James Brown’s birds fly heavily beneath the balcony, hampered by the oppression of a rainless month. The magpies cackle unspeakable obscenities, whilst the horrible child across the street has been burning with a continual rage since the end of term a week ago. Her yappy little legless dog vanishes round the corner on a morning walk, and undeterred by civility or the fact that it’s just gone 7am, the child screeches “BELLABELLABELLABELLABELLABELLA” at a frequency which makes the coffee in my mug tremble, like the watery vibrations of the T-Rex approaching the Land Cruiser. Later that day the mother, demanding an apology for something from one of her brood, is inanely stuck on repeat, shouting directly into my kitchen four floors above, “SORRY MUM. SORRY MUM. SORRY MUM. SORRY MUM.” in a manner demonstrative neither of quiet forgiveness nor of reasonable conversational volume.
I am not immune to this weather-borne rage. I snarl at pedestrians scuttling across my bicycle path like stupid soft-shell crabs. I have dinged my bell so often and so determinedly this month that the shiny black paint is dented. When my bell delivers no discernible effect, I bark “RUN!” and watch them scamper in ovine panic. I, too, am reduced to rudely bellowing at my fellow people.
Others release their anger in more civilised ways. On Wednesday I spent my lunchtime in the British Museum at the Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece exhibition, amidst The Thinker, The Kiss, and the beautiful The Age of Bronze. As I gazed at one of the Parthenon sculptures which had provided Rodin with so much inspiration, I became aware of a curious buzzing noise emanating from a woman nearby. I tuned my ear to her unusual frequency and realised that she was hissing angrily at the elderly man next to me. Her words became clearer as her face became redder, and I caught, “You DID just step directly in front of me, though - I’m NOT going to make an issue of it, but you did stand in the way. Anyway-” (and this last bit was mumbled very quickly) “- I don’t wish to discuss it further.” The man raised his eyebrows and replied with a frigidly polite crescendo,
"But you ARE, INDEED.”
(I too had been stepped in front of several times, and responded in kind, but I had thought the correct way to manage the situation was to huff as loudly as one dared and never address the issue directly.)
I listen to Dark Side of the Moon seven times in forty-eight hours, and ride the waves of rage and calm. I see Roger Waters in concert in Hyde Park, and immerse myself in a sublime fury of psychedelic rock. Trump comes to visit the following week, and hundreds of thousands of protesters gather in a seething ocean of good-natured resentment. I had hoped to bellow out some of my tension with the crowd's chants, but by the time I arrive in Trafalgar Square the rally has started and Caroline Lucas is already speaking.
Even my supreme cooking is no longer delicious. I make a horrible pilafi with underwhelmingly spiced and leathery rice, which Gareth loyally says is lovely. It is too hot to eat anything. This has never happened to me before in the UK. I experience a deep saudade for South East Asia and realise I haven’t left Europe in over six months. I can almost taste the vermillion-and-cream laksa of Malacca on my tongue, and sense a wistful memory of the gentle rain in Luang Prabang. I need to eat the traffic-light curries of Bangkok to redly burn my throat, to fill my face with melty yellow mussaman potatoes, to pop green pea aubergines between my teeth like ripe seaweed bladders.
The mercury reaches 36°C, and the weather becomes so exciting that there is a live blog on The Guardian’s website, updated every ten minutes with pointless tips on how to keep cool, and the obvious importance of hydration. The rain is predicted, at last, with thunderstoms and lightning. I watch the clouds loom above my head through the enormous skylight at work.
I leave the office early to escape cycling through the monsoon, and as I wheel my bike out of the back gate the air smells of Singapore at 3pm. The first plump drops shatter on my browned skin as I turn into my street. I head straight for the balcony to watch the show. Even my geraniums look tense. The last bumblebee in London climbs wearily underneath a roseate flower just before the sky breaks. Thunder rages around me, and the skyline of London is treacherously grey and yellow, like a sulphurous hard-boiled egg shot with lightning. I can no longer see Westminster or the London Eye from the kitchen window. The air snaps and prickles.
And then the rains come.
The street is empty. James Brown’s birds have vanished. The children are inside, and silent.
EDIT: The birds are parakeets; it was Jimi Hendrix, the naughty boy; and the story is definitely not true. London's parakeets: Everything you need to know
Amidst the ongoing European heatwave, even James Brown’s birds fly heavily beneath the balcony, hampered by the oppression of a rainless month. The magpies cackle unspeakable obscenities, whilst the horrible child across the street has been burning with a continual rage since the end of term a week ago. Her yappy little legless dog vanishes round the corner on a morning walk, and undeterred by civility or the fact that it’s just gone 7am, the child screeches “BELLABELLABELLABELLABELLABELLA” at a frequency which makes the coffee in my mug tremble, like the watery vibrations of the T-Rex approaching the Land Cruiser. Later that day the mother, demanding an apology for something from one of her brood, is inanely stuck on repeat, shouting directly into my kitchen four floors above, “SORRY MUM. SORRY MUM. SORRY MUM. SORRY MUM.” in a manner demonstrative neither of quiet forgiveness nor of reasonable conversational volume.
I am not immune to this weather-borne rage. I snarl at pedestrians scuttling across my bicycle path like stupid soft-shell crabs. I have dinged my bell so often and so determinedly this month that the shiny black paint is dented. When my bell delivers no discernible effect, I bark “RUN!” and watch them scamper in ovine panic. I, too, am reduced to rudely bellowing at my fellow people.
Others release their anger in more civilised ways. On Wednesday I spent my lunchtime in the British Museum at the Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece exhibition, amidst The Thinker, The Kiss, and the beautiful The Age of Bronze. As I gazed at one of the Parthenon sculptures which had provided Rodin with so much inspiration, I became aware of a curious buzzing noise emanating from a woman nearby. I tuned my ear to her unusual frequency and realised that she was hissing angrily at the elderly man next to me. Her words became clearer as her face became redder, and I caught, “You DID just step directly in front of me, though - I’m NOT going to make an issue of it, but you did stand in the way. Anyway-” (and this last bit was mumbled very quickly) “- I don’t wish to discuss it further.” The man raised his eyebrows and replied with a frigidly polite crescendo,
"But you ARE, INDEED.”
(I too had been stepped in front of several times, and responded in kind, but I had thought the correct way to manage the situation was to huff as loudly as one dared and never address the issue directly.)
I listen to Dark Side of the Moon seven times in forty-eight hours, and ride the waves of rage and calm. I see Roger Waters in concert in Hyde Park, and immerse myself in a sublime fury of psychedelic rock. Trump comes to visit the following week, and hundreds of thousands of protesters gather in a seething ocean of good-natured resentment. I had hoped to bellow out some of my tension with the crowd's chants, but by the time I arrive in Trafalgar Square the rally has started and Caroline Lucas is already speaking.
Even my supreme cooking is no longer delicious. I make a horrible pilafi with underwhelmingly spiced and leathery rice, which Gareth loyally says is lovely. It is too hot to eat anything. This has never happened to me before in the UK. I experience a deep saudade for South East Asia and realise I haven’t left Europe in over six months. I can almost taste the vermillion-and-cream laksa of Malacca on my tongue, and sense a wistful memory of the gentle rain in Luang Prabang. I need to eat the traffic-light curries of Bangkok to redly burn my throat, to fill my face with melty yellow mussaman potatoes, to pop green pea aubergines between my teeth like ripe seaweed bladders.
The mercury reaches 36°C, and the weather becomes so exciting that there is a live blog on The Guardian’s website, updated every ten minutes with pointless tips on how to keep cool, and the obvious importance of hydration. The rain is predicted, at last, with thunderstoms and lightning. I watch the clouds loom above my head through the enormous skylight at work.
And then the rains come.
The street is empty. James Brown’s birds have vanished. The children are inside, and silent.
EDIT: The birds are parakeets; it was Jimi Hendrix, the naughty boy; and the story is definitely not true. London's parakeets: Everything you need to know
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