Thursday 20 July 2006

SOME DISLIKE IT HOT

The heat-wave swelters on, setting sizzling new records and, consequently, leaving us all in a muck-sweat...

Yesterday was the hottest July day, in the UK, since 1911 and in the not-much-cooler evening David took me - as a belated birthday treat - to see the new production of Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George at London's Wyndham's theatre.

The show is staged with scintillating vision and huge technical pizzazz - but sitting, dripping, in the Royal Circle, my heart went out to the gloved and hatted cast all tightly buttoned-up in their nineteenth-century brocades, bonnets, bustles and boots.


At the beginning of the second act, the characters depicted in George Seurat's painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, are living in the framed picture hanging on a gallery wall and complaining about having to stand or sit still for so long - and the heat!

Was it my imagination, or did they sing the repeated line "It's HOT up here!" with, perhaps, a little more passion than usual?

***

According to the authorities responsible for keeping an eye on the thermometer, today's temperatures have dropped very slightly --- to only near-tropical levels!

You could have fooled me!

I still feel that if I were a lolly, I'd already be down to my stick!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Aw, summer bites.

Speaking from experience, the coolest place in house is under the bed with the curtains shut, a nice, cool (read: wet) face-washer on hand and a large Coke nearby. On the plus side, it's a perfect place to hide from your boss and catch up on your reading. On the, uh, minus side, it's not the beach.

Do with that information what you will.

Hope it cool off soon!