Wow, this is some heatwave we're having. And I've noticed it's also having an adverse effect on the number of browsers and people posting on the forum. Not that I blame anyone for that. I've not been online myself much in recent days, with this heat making my tiny study unbearably stuffy and the great outdoors rather more appealing than usual.

:)

But I was meant to be writing poetry this week and next, before having to start work on some prose I've been putting off! The heat, however, is making me so lethargic that it's difficult even to read poetry, let alone write it. I just keep wanting to flop and listen to music.

Does anyone else have this trouble or are you all fired up into a creative fever by these long hot afternoons and evenings? Personally I'm so used to mild English summers that a heatwave is too much of a shock to the system! :blink:

Me too - I never do well in hot weather - It's the only time you'll hear me complaining about english weather! And this heatwave on top of hot flushes? you can forget about brain activity altogether - which is *not* good as I'm in my first ever slam tomorrow.

Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggghhhhhhh << thats the sound of me running for the hills

I like the heat. I'm on a couple of poems a day at present ... but only because I'm meant to be writing an essay I really don't want to write. Everytime I sit down to tackle the *!*@~* amazing ideas for poems just pop into my head from nowhere. :rolleyes:
This really is very bad as I could be putting my earning capacity, pension fund, children's future, husband's peace of mind, dog's holidays on the Costa del Bowow at risk. Poems poems go away and come back another day :(

This is so unfair - I sense that everyone in the world is out in the sun while I'm in an empty (apart from me) computer cluster trying to get to grips with alcohol use in the general uk population. How am I meant to concentrate knowing everyone else is having a good time? :angry:

Change of avatar seemed appropriate.

Good luck with the slam Angela! :D

Nope. Your not quite alone.

I'm sitting in front of computer trying to tick things of a very long list. Tick one thing off. Put three back on.

As for heat, I run a computer with seven drives in it and enough fans that it sounds like a hover croft at my feet. In this weather the case still gets hot all over. I'm working in a small room if the weather holds by Monday I reckon I will have lost 3lbs.

:D

Glad to hear someone else is sweating it out. I can't see for hayfever today so I doubt I'll be very productive. The family has gone to the coast - only reasonable option. Bah Humbug. : red eyed smiley with sniffs and general misery:

I can safely say I wont be productive today. England kick off at 2pm :)

By 'eck, it's hot. My keyboard's melting ... :huh:

My house is melting and smells like we are keeping pigs indoors. :o My daughter and I spent the whole of yesterday lurking in the 10ft x 10ft area of shade in the back garden, burying our hands and feet in wet sand for relief. I've sent the dog on holiday to relatives at the coast. Meanwhile, up at the allotments, the cabbages are panting in the sun and the peas are cooking on the stem. I'm hatching a plot to liberate the tomatoes from the torture of greehouses ........ :unsure:

Not been a good week. My office has turned into an SAS desert warfare training box. The sun shines on it all day with no respite by the afternoon I feel like a damp cloth. :(

I opened the window which opens out onto a dual carriage way and apart from being extremely irritating, I probably have sent some clients deaf by yelling at them down the phone due to the traffic noise.

I managed to obtain a fan which lasted all of one day before the firm's server decided it felt left out. After sounding life a grinder it gave up the ghost which had all the staff hopeful that they might be allowed to go home. After giving it 20 mins ,it booted up again and all the staff went back to work. Death threats then materialised on my desk. :D

Time, perhaps, for the UK to change our working hours as an emergency measure, with an earlier start and an earlier finish, so that we can all go home for a siesta by 2-3pm. Just for use during heatwaves, in case this weather pattern becomes a trend in future years.

You don't get all this work through the heat of the day nonsense on the continent ...

:huh:

The heatwave has made me want to read a social history of ice, which is handy because Elizabeth David's final work, Harvest of the Cold Months, is on my shelf.

Ah. What's this about ice houses?

They made ice cream by doing what?

Snow!

I have just been to the Yeats exhibition at the National Library in Dublin and was very tempted to steal a tiny green book which Yeats kept his domestic outgoings in. However once i realised it was a facsimilie I didn't bother. But I would heartely reccommend a visit to this show as there are plenty of manuscripts of his there, under glass, giving off the poetic penscript glow one associates with Silly Willy the hashish pill popper and national ideological visionary who wove the incoherent jumble of his life to a full capacity.

~

But it is hot hot hot.

Nice to see you here again, Ovid. And struggling there to keep to the Heatwave topic. Please don't bother, it's funnier if you don't!

And yes, it is bloomin' hot!

Talking of the weather, here in the Midlands we had a freak storm two days ago because of this incredible heat. We went out for a walk and returned early due to lashing rain and tornado-style winds, only to discover that our 12 foot inflatable swimming pool, which I swear had several inches of water in it, had flown over the top of our house and come to rest in the road opposite, nestled against a fence.

It's looking very sorry for itself now, having several punctures ... :rolleyes:

It's another hot one today. Probably going to be a record summer here, as it is very unusual to get it so sunny for such a prolonged spell.

~

Another litany of disaster has occured which gives me the perfect opportunity not to post. My computer crashed a few weeks back and I eventually bumped into the guy who bult it and sold it me and saw him for the conman he is. Then I sat on my Mp3 and bust the LCD screen, and it will be three weeks before I get it back. Then when I went to upload my first podcast from the art gallery readings, I discovered I would have to shell out some dough to continue.

And the irony being that the week before last was the busiest and best yet. A singer songwriter breaking up the spoken word, lots of new voices and there till 1AM; smoking indoors and having our fill of ale from the offy, which is 4 times cheaper than the pub. Plus all the arty vibe of painters and their politics.

~

I read the rest of Heaney's ouvre over the weekend, and got a much clearer handle on him. I only knew up till 1980'ish and after reading Station Island, his trajectory as a poet becomes very clear, especially when read in conjuction with his prose. His essay on fellow contemporary Northern Irish poets Place and Displacement was written in the same year as Station Island, which is the transition of his voice into the higher stream of poetical thought, where he manages to free his mind from the cultural bind of his own part of the world, by invoking an alternative realm equal to but apart from the actual: a world he can sidestep into and strike, as he says, his "own note".

This is effectively him "at the top of his bent"; the langugae of an oolamh coming through and plain for all to see. I learnt quite a lot from this read and only wish I had my computer on which to work, instead of this public space whose novelty has long worn off. Now it is only a place in which to avoid the stares of giggling tourists chasing chimeras of real Irishness one can so easily conjure, stun and pull their minds to mine with. Like Dunleany's Ginger Man seeing life devoid of pretence and unable to escape the cold reality of its transient warmth, via linguistic magic understood in all its naked form. Stripped from myth and uncertainty so many believe its essence is imbued with and clouded by.

Maybe I am just giving myself a summer off after five years hard graft. Starting in the dunce stream without a thought in my head to call my own, and now managing to convey a spiritual realism via the imprint of emotions which are moving away from poems of personal concern and towards the cynosure of an unexpected and previously unthinkable force. The originating "fountain" of spirit Heaney's Station Island finishes with. The outside-of-self silent raging light of creation swimming fate strokes upon the life-lone canvas of time we move through.

~

If I had my books to hand and time to ponder I could explore this more fully with a greater insight and eloquence than at present, but I can feel a change upon me. A taking stock and gathering. Once my computer is fixed I will gather together the entirity of my 100 plus poems on one document and start on the next phase. Wind up the curtain on the getting published stage and send out a manuscript to the names I know cannnot critically combat me to unbelieve my gift.

If any publisher out there wishes to harness their reputation to mine, please contact me with an offer.

~

Actually, I detected a cooler breeze when crossing the Liffey after lunch in Focus Ireland, the homeless charity restaurant, where a dinner costs but 1.50 euro. Today I had a chicken salad with bread and butter pudding and custard for desert. If I went a few doors down it would have cost 20 euros for inferior quality fare, such is the topsy turvy way of gaelic culture. The alternative was roast chicken, spuds, carrots or fajita vegetable wraps with cajun sauce, all fresh ingredients and delicious, but only available to the very addicted, poor or enlightened.