In some contexts, this sort of heat is sexy. You know, ceiling fan slowly rotating, orange light spilling through a veneitian blind, illuminating a room with a bed containing an attractive person of appropriate gender wearing not very much aside from a sheen of sweat, bourbon and ice on a rickety table, jazz filtering in from somewhere up the street. Sexy.

London is not sexy in the heat. London is a great mass of sweating stone. I can hear the honk of buses from out the window, I have no venetian blinds or ceiling fan, I am going to the gym shortly, so cannot have the bourbon and ice, and worst of all, there are no attractive naked people in my bed. What’s the point of this sort of heat, then, I ask you?

It’s raining. Those of us in London have all noticed that. It is Rainy Season in London town, and there is nothing for it but listen to hot jazz and drink cold rum.

What’s new, though, it’s that it’s raining inside my front door.

(I assume that the seal on the flat roof has gone. Still, this is not exactly an idea state of affairs….)

Or, to translate from the MacGowan, returned from Scotland. I see we’re braced for another grim summer down here.

U2 were good, although the crowd made it pretty much the worst gig I’ve ever attended. But I did get to go see Flogging Molly again the following night – I had no idea that they were playing but davebushe spotted it in the listings that morning, so I dragged mindwanders along with me, and had the usual completely storming time. Photos to follow, with any luck – I’ve got about 350 of the bastards to process when I get a minute.

The trip has given me a few things to think about, so I’ll try and write them up when I’ve got a bit more space to mull them over. For now, thanks to all the chums I saw while in Scotland, huge apologies to those I failed to catch up with through lack of time.

Looks like I won’t be buying my own place this year. Arses. Maybe next year, if nothing else goes wrong.

Tired. Horribly, horribly stressed.

Going to the gym. If the world is still here when I get back, I shall be killing it,

I wasn’t in the best of moods when I left the office, and when I stepped outside to feel that close heat, that dead, still air, and looked up at the granite looking clouds, I knew I’d be bloody lucky to make it to the tube station dry. I put the headphones in, and with Garbage’s “Sex Is Not The Enemy” playing, zipped the Stupid Thing With The Pockets up, and started walking. Sure enough, before I’d gone 10 yards, I felt the first one hit. A big heavy raindrop, the sort that you can feel as it splashes against your skin.

I broke into a jog, as the pavement around me started to stain. I passed someone from the same building as me, hunched over and muttering, clearly extremely pissed off about this. I stretched my legs a bit more, picked the pace up slightly, as it got heavier. By the time I’d gone 200 yards, it was falling out of the sky in great sheets. Two coke cans danced passed me as I crossed the road, the wind whipping them, the sheer force of the gusts causing them to bounce waist-high, and slamming rain into me. I could already feel it running off my hair in rivulets.

I was at a dead run by the time I made it across the road, and someone was laughing. It wasn’t until I passed the garden with the group of kids in football shirts, all of them spinning round with outstretched arms that I realised it was me. Hammering the pavement, every footstep raising a splash, the rain pouring off me, clothes and hair plastered to me, and the thunder bouncing off the buildings, pounding down the space between me and the tube station, laughing like a maniac. I’m sure everyone I passed thought I was some kind of escaped lunatic.

Except those kids. They got it.

There are worse ways to start a weekend.