Hotter Than July

At last we are booked in for some proper summer weather here in the UK, well most of us are.  After the summer we had in 2012 seeing a row of yellow orbs lined up in the BBC website's five-day forecast is a strangely unfamiliar sight.  Today is Men's Finals day at Wimbledon, and temperatures of up to 30C have been mentioned for that part of London.  Inside the Centre Court is will be sweltering.

So all the best to the finalists in withstanding that heat, as well as four or five hours of gladiatorial combat.  I am not the least bit bnothered who wins, as I know in advance that it will be the best man on the day.  That's juist how tennis works, and no-one ever makes excuses for themselves if they lose, not in public or in interviews anyhow.  That is part of the reason I love watching Wimbledon, that and the ingenious scoring method in tennis which makes it so very exciting to watch.

I am not partisan in nationalist terms.  I find it impossible to support a team or a person just because they come from some part of the UK.  However, I have a sneaking and growing admiration for the Welsh rugby team, and support them (in the sense I am pleased to see them do well) in their televised matches, mostly beacuse I know how much it matters to many of our lovely neighbours.

I must tackle learning the Welsh National Anthem in Welsh.  It's a wonderfully stirring one, on a par with the Marseillaise.  A bloody good sing!

Here in mid-Wales the mercury will hover around 25C-26C at the warmest point of the day, we are told.  That's just nice.  Mid to upper 70sF for those of you who prefer old money.  Any cloud that floats by with be white and fluffy, my very favourite sort of sky.  I know a lot of people love a sky of pure peerless blue, but like an occasional lofty cloud to enable me to fix on it and get some sense of the height of the atmosphere towering above us, miraculously giving us air to breathe and shielding us from excess harmful rays.  When I was a kid I used to love to lie in a field or on the heather, sprawled on my back in total relaxation, watching the billowing clouds float across the sky.  I guess I was a bit of a solitary dreamer, even back then.  I still need a few minutes or hours a day of quiet to think my own thoughts, or I can feel very overstretched and pulled tight.

My love of the sky has given me a great enjoyment of flying (I even feel excited at take off and landing) and enabled me to screw up my nerve and be a passenger in a friend's microlight (which is exactly like flying strapped into camping chair attached to a lawn-mower engine)  a couple of years ago, despite my slight fear of heights.  I loved it but for the fact I could not bring myself to look straight down, to see my own foot dangling 2,500ft above the ground.  Too freaky!  Also, it was jolly cold up there, even on a sunny day in August.  My ankles and neck were freezing despite wearing a borrowed ski suit.

So today is my perfect sort of temperate climatic offering: hot but not sweltering, blue skies with whisps of white cloud, and a do-as-you-please Sunday stretching ahead of us. Sorry if that sounds awfully smug, but it happens too infrequently in the UK for us to feel complacent.  Let us enjoy it while we can !