The great Hot Wave

16 July, in the year of our Lord 2022

Up betimes, and a breakfast of cereals from Dorsett, with luciose berrys and cherrys, left over from when Mr. and Mrs. Dick come, but the milk soured, it being so warm in the night; thence to visit my mother and father, and take my father for another Covey test at the Hospitalle, for on Monday he is to be seen by a master specialist for his throat, though I am unsure why for when I saw him last he declared himself free of simptoms.
  It now being very hot weather, left it till after supper to work a while in my little garden by the roadside. By and by come a figure walking slowly, ringing a handbell and dressed for the beach, in straw fidora hat, spectacles dark against the suns light, trousers cut above the knee and a tea shirt bearing on the front the words ‘Warm front approaching’.
  ‘Evening, Mr. Schafernacker.’
  ‘Oh! Evening, Mr. Pepys,’ says he, mildly.
  ‘I believe you are turning our fortunes in the manner of the weather, after some tediose months?’
  ‘The Spanish and French are sending us their excess hot air, if that is what you mean.’
  ‘I knew it!’ cry I. ‘They emit enough of it, and no doubt seek to punish us more for severing our ties with the Continent!’
  ‘Well,’ says he, looking as if he doubts it works like that, ‘whatever the case I am not sure you will like it when it comes, for it will be a Hot Wave like none other.’
  ‘I doubt it,’ snort I, dismissively, ‘for I recall even now the hottest day and night I ever felt in my life.’
  ‘No doubt you will point, as do all of a certayne age, to the year of our Lord, nineteen seventy-six.’
  ‘Not that. The ones I preserve in my memory are the seventh day of June, 1665, the hottest day we ever knew in England in that month, as all confessed at the time, and the Drout the following year, when in July oranges ripened in the open at Hackney, in August the Thames at Oxford shrunk to a trickle, and in September a tinder dry London went up in flames.’
  ‘Well, I fear that in two or three days the heat will excede all that hath gone before. A man of your age would be well-advised to read this.’ He proffers a handbill the colour of a Spanish tomater. On one side is a list of instructions and on the other a skull and crossed bones. ‘It is my Dire Weather Warning.’
  I toke it with a certain disdain and read, amongst other flummery and statements of the obviose, that I should sprinkle cold water upon myselfe severalle times daily (which I shall not, lest it stain my new stuff suit), avoid too much exercise (which advice is redundant, since I do that already) and drink plenty of Fluids, but not alkerhole for it is dehidrating (which will be easy, for I shall make Monday the second day of the year on which I abstayne, thus fulfilling Gouvernement guidence for another twelve months); also that such a degree of heat is a great danger for those with respiratory Embarassment or an unstable heart, which may fayle, but I scoff that ‘a man of my age’ be prey to such infirmities.
  And so he on his way, handbell ringing, and on the back of his shirt a cartoon of a Martiny glass with ice, straw and little umberella, and under it the legend, ‘There’s no bar like an isobar’.

 

19 July, in the year of our Lord 2022

Last night so hot that by three a-clock I dispensed with my night cap. After a little while, finding this of no benefit, conceded I might consult my red weather Warning and instructions therein; and so, this done, removed, first, my woollen blanket, and, a while later and still too hot, my velvett night gown. After, still without sleep, and there no movement of air though the opened window, up, and, reading instrucktions further down the page, sprinkled iced water upon myselfe from a flagon, downed the rest in four great swigs and applied a high factor sunscreen. But sleep fitfull thereafter, waking of a sudden from a night dread where I had no job at the Naval Board and begged all to receive me as an apprentice, and in the morning found my ankles swelled, which put me in a great trouble that my Heart become unstable and fayled during the night, so took my pulse and eased in my mind to find it present on both sides. Poor Banjo all day not knowing where to put himselfe, it being far too hot here and still too hot there, and not eating any food and generally flopping in the coolest shade he could find.
  At supper in the gazette read that a man in a village near Lincoln claymed the heat of day to be more than three degrees above blood’s heat, which was never known before in all the land.