Heatwave

We woke up in Thaxted this morning. My parents were having breakfast in the garden with their friends Cootie and Andrew and they seemed to be having wonderful fun. By the time we'd drifted off to sleep and woken up again, my parents' friends had gone, apparently in search of medieval ditches in Saffron Walden, which feels like quite a fun expedition.

Breakfast in the garden wasn't an option for Nathan and me. Nathan's hay-fever reached terrifying levels in the grass meadows around my grandmother's house yesterday evening, and he went to bed with bloodshot, puffy eyes which were streaming with tears, feeling very sorry for himself. 

Still, a heatwave seems to have descended on the country and I'm not complaining for a second. The air is still. The sun is baking down. Everything feels somewhat Spanish. 

We went to Craft and Cake this afternoon and basked in Julie's garden with the next door neighbour's cat, who surely has one paw in the hereafter! I've seldom seen a sadder-looking, mangier, more ancient feline specimen. At one point the poor mite started scratching himself and huge clumps of hair were floating into the ether. He spent most of the afternoon hiding in the long grass. "What's he hiding from?" Asked Julie. "Death!" Said Nathan. 

Nathan vanished at 4pm to do a corporate singing gig in Surrey in a place I seem entirely incapable of remembering. I think it's probably a place called Dorking, but I have no concept of the geography of Surrey and not a great deal of interest in the type of people who live there! 

We were supposed to go from Dorking to Corsham in Wiltshire to rehearse Much Ado About Nothing, but we're also due in Huntingdon tomorrow at 2pm, and the thought of travelling 100 miles to spend 30 minutes rehearsing before driving for two hours again started to make us both panic. Furthermore, I was going to have to drive to Dorking with Nathan this evening and hang around for four hours waiting for Nathan's  corporate event to finish so that we could drive onto Wiltshire together.  Everything started to feel rather ridiculous, so, with heavy heart, we decided we'd have to skip Corsham and promised the director we'd rehearse everyone at a later stage. 

There are some moments when going home and shutting the door on life feel like the only option, and I haven't had any time on my own since my illness last Sunday. Literally, not one second, other than long journeys to the East End and back on the tube, during which time I was surrounded by strangers. I literally feel like I've talked non-stop, and when I've not been talking, conversations have almost perpetually been floating around me. My ears have been raped by useless pieces of information about edit formats, Harding tests, policy decisions and the points of view of people whom I don't know. Even at my Grandmother's grave yesterday, I had to take a lengthy phone call which I'm not sure was that important. As a result of all this, I just want to sit down, throw my shoes off, watch telly and fall asleep knowing I don't have to work, think about White City or even wake up until at least 11am.