Scorcher

Jerked out of my dream of burning books, I leapt out of bed, the sheets seemed on fire.

I rushed into the shower and enjoyed the cascading coolness. Gradually the images of curling blackened pages ran with the water. I dressed in fresh clothes and went into my writing room to begin the working day.

As I reached up for the leather-bound dictionary and opened it. I breathed in a strong smell and saw that all the edges of the pages were scorched.

It’s been very warm for this time of the year and on a good day my prose style has been scorching. I mean, really. Sentences flashing from my fingers like sparks. Similes to die for. I opened the window and breathed in air fresh as daisies, fresh as new-baked bread, fresh as teenagers in the back rows of cinemas.

But still very hot. I’m trying to think cool things these days to help me stay calm. I don’t understand these random outbreaks of burning. Even in our dreams we aren’t safe, it seems – has global warming arrived fully and totally at last? No one told us that we had to put up with self-combustion, but only last week a cow on the Paggett estate suddenly had one of its rear legs on fire.

I could crack on about self-cooking beef, but really, it wasn’t pleasant. Nor the fish we rodded out of the river recently, pre-poached in brine. Hard boiled eggs from hard boiled chickens. Oh, I could bang on, but really.

I dream of escaping to one of the poles but the ice-cap is melting and the polar bears have all been given dark ocular wear by the Royal Society to prevent them going blind and banging into each other. Oh, ice! I long to hear cubes clinking in my lunchtime Martini again but have to make do with tepid aperitifs these days.

Only the writing is any good but soon there may be no one to read my best work ever.
Close my eyes now and go to the library of my dreams, cathedral of ice and ideas, waterfall of words, to drench me in stillnesses.


Cindy Oswin and Chris Meade, two in the morning, Hornsey Library All-Nighter