Hot hot hot II July 20, 2006

Hotter than any day on which any Cumbrian farmer, particularly around Esthwaite Water, drew back from his work wiping his brow with an aside to his wife bearing fruit; hotter than any day on which anyone climbed a Cumbrian mountain; or dipped in a cool tarn half-way up (and that includes Blue Tarn); hotter than on any day that I myself was with anyone; any day on which we were slumped like seals over hot rocks off the Amazons island in Coniston; hotter than any day sat on Humphrey Head watching cocklers; hotter than all of Barrow’s days when the road tar would bubble; hotter than any sun-kissed Sunday with the children at Askam sand-dunes. And in the valleys, no scaremongering fighter-jet has ever tipped its wing through hotter air; no fire-engine has ever been called out on a more blazing day; no new fangled wind-turbine blade has ever turned silently or creakingly through hotter air. And are these record temperatures for the waters? I have never swum in an Ullswater so warm and nor have you.