Cooling down

Another hot and humid night soaked in sweat, sleeping in fits and starts, needing to drink plenty of water and slow to get started when I got up at nine. The sky is clear, the sun fiercely bright, it's 28C and rising. Blinds and curtains down, windows closed to prevent the in-flow of hot air as much as possible. Gulls cry out from the rooftops as if they are complaining about the heat. I trimmed my goatee as short as stubble when shaving this morning, hoping this will let my chin feel the benefit of the breeze if we get any today.

I cooked a savoury veg and lentil dish with rice for lunch, and then had a siesta to appease the tiredness that accumulates over a series of restless nights. Before going for a walk I finished reading John Doyle's novel 'Communion'. It segues between being the story of a lonely failed seminarian working as a steel works security guard at the time of the Port Talbot Passion Play in 2012, and a crime drama in which he is manipulated by a girl friend from his teenage years into being a 'useful idiot' in bomb plot logistics. 

She tells him her plan claiming the confidential seal of the confessional (though he isn't ordained and isn't licensed to hear confessions. He avoids betraying her confidence and extricates himself from her plot by destroying surveillance video and equipment in which they appear, then dumps his keys in the river while disguised as a character in the passion play, wearing liturgical vestments brought home from seminary. 

We are not told if the bomb goes off in the closed down steel works? We're not told if the security lodge gets blown up eliminating evidence of his action. He has found a way to do the right thing but we are offered no clue as to whether he finds satisfaction or fulfilment in this. The basic premiss is annoying, relying on a flawed idea about the discipline of the confessional. It's annoying not to find out if there's any possibility of relief proposed from loneliness or inability to make meaningful relationships. It's a bleak portrayal of existence in a world without hope that anything can ever change for the better.

There was a cooling breeze from the west, driving hot air eastwards, bringing welcome relief from the humidity, but remained warm inside a house that takes a while to cool down again after a week of hot weather. I