I stayed up late last night - really I should say this morning - watching music programmes with my Spanish sister, music programmes Phil and I have recorded over the years and which we had largely forgotten about until we were looking for something to watch with my sister. She has been here visiting friends and family in various part of the country. Her flight to Gibraltar was leaving Manchester this morning at 7.30. The instructions with her reservation told her she needed to be at Manchester’s terminal 1 three hours before departure time. So a taxi was coming for her at 3.30 am.
We had a small panic when we checked the text message the taxi company had sent on Sunday confirming the booking. It seemed to say that the taxi was coming at 4.30. When I called their number at 2.00 in the morning though a computer generated voice told me: ‘you already have a booking for 3.30”. So all was well. Whoever had sent the text. message had clearly been confused by dates and times.
It was not really worth going to bed. Earlier we had considered an afternoon nap but as the sun decided to come out we went for a walk instead. And so we sat up, talking about anything and everything, and watching music videos. We’ve done quite a lot of that over the last few evenings. Last night/this morning we watched a documentary about Paul Simon returning to South Africa, 25 years after the release of his Graceland Album. I had forgotten how much criticism there had been of his breaking UN cultural sanctions when he first went to South Africa. Yet his on his reunion visit he was greeted with rapturous enthusiasm by the musicians he had worked with 25 years previously. Such good music too!
The taxi duly arrived a 3.30am and off my Spanish sister went, back to the sunshine of southern Spain. And off I went to bed, setting no alarm and sleeping until midmorning. The house is very quiet - my sister could probably win talking competitions! It’s lovely to have visitors but it is also quite pleasant to return to quietness after a veritable flurry of family activity all weekend.
Thinking of the heat of Gibraltar, where my sister was flying to, I read about the heat of Louisiana, USA, where what is described as a heat dome has been hovering over them for a couple of weeks now. Daytime temperatures have been 40+° and night time temperatures have remained at around 30°. How do you live like that?
A church in New Orleans was reported to have kept its doors open after the morning service on Sunday so that people in the neighbourhood who didn’t have air-conditioning could get some respite from the heat. Two things strike me: surely the church should be open to worshippers or visitors all day anyway (or maybe there’s a fear of vandalism and theft) and of everyone had air-conditioning switched on for hours every day the climate change problem would be exacerbated. We need to find another solution but goodness knows how we solve the problem of areas of the globe becoming uninhabitable.
Apparently the sermon at that church in New Orleans had been about letting go. “Psalm 37 starts out with ‘Fret not thyself because of evildoers,’” said Pastor Anthony Jeanmarie III. “It’s just encouraging us as believers that things in life happen to us sometimes that are of ill intent, but our job is not to focus on the person or the problem.”
But Mother Nature herself, the reporter commented, did not want to let go or let up, with a heat warning expected to last through Tuesday. Heat index readings reached as high as 120F last week and evening temperatures in the 80s offered little reprieve. “This heat is disrespectful,” said church secretary Thelma Curtis.
I love the idea that heat can be “disrespectful”!
At present we don’t have problems of “disrespectful heat” in our neck of the woods. In fact a friend of mine who complained about the heat just a week or so ago and then went off to Mallorca, where she complained again about the heat, is now complaining furiously that it is actually cold here in Greater Manchester. Some folk are never satisfied!
Life goes on. Stay:safe and well, everyone!
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