It has been beastly hot again lately, the kind of hot that washes out the afternoon almost completely. Any thought of taking exercise later in the day is quickly snuffed out, so last Sunday I woke at 6:00 and was out of the house and on my bike by 6:30 with only the one cup of tea inside me.

It was glorious.

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Just finished this, a moment ago, on a blisteringly hot day, the kind of day that forces you into a darkened room, windows shut, blinds down, ceiling fan on. Any breeze from outside would only heat things up, and any attempt to sleep is fraught with a hot, icky pillow. It seemed appropriate, though doubtless I would have said the same had I finished it during an icy blizzard or drizzling greyness. Anything but temperate normalcy.

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I no longer have a garden. I used to have one, in spades. Almost two hectares of old apple orchard, a large polytunnel, raised beds for veggies, flowers galore, a pond big enough to dip into after a hard day’s work. All gone, for reasons that needn’t detain us now, and that I try hard not to think a...

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In a recent episode of his podcast Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell broadcast a lecture he gave on the Taxonomy of the Modern Mystery Story at the New Orleans Book Festival. It is, as promised, delightful rather than persuasive and the central observation seems true, now that he pointed it out.

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This morning, alerted by a friend who is a keen birder, we abandoned our bed and customary two-tea lie-in and walked to the nearby park. Two of the entrances were still locked after they should have been open but the sight of someone walking a dog sent us round the corner to the third entrance. We w...

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