Cheery people who look like they’ve never had cause to sweat in their lives keep saying that it’s the hottest summer since records began. It’s repeated inside every news bulletin and the weather forecasts that come every half-hour are bragging about the long, dry weeks that are going to stretch into Autumn, like it’s somehow down to them how high the country’s thermostat goes or something.

The grass in the park across from my place is tinder dry, arid as an imagined veldt under your feet. The water fountain in the middle of the park was turned off weeks ago and the water in the concrete paddling pools has shrunk into pockets of dust-coloured sludge. Too hot to work, too hot to eat, too hot to breathe.