Heated Memory

This summer has been the hottest on record. Online climate change deniers rage that it's unconnected to man's pursuit of capital while the icebergs crumble into the sea. The future looks bleak. But there is comfort in the heat, a mandate to slow down, do less, reflect.

I pad around my house naked too hot to care what the neighbours think anymore and my mind looks back to a moment long passed, in London, mid-Nineties, when, similarly hot, I walked into the little kitchen in our flat one morning to make a cup of tea. As the kettle boiled, I looked out of the window and locked eyes with an elderly lady, also in her kitchen, also waiting for the kettle to boil, also naked.

We smiled at each other, acknowledging the moment, accepting the moment, connecting in the moment, and then went back to our tea making. A random moment of shared experience in a sweltering city of millions, so pure, it still makes me smile over twenty years later.