15 August 2026

It seems there will be only a day or two more of this heatwave summer, as our temperatures in the 30s are due to drop suddenly and significantly. 

While part of me is longing for the rain so badly needed, I've wanted to capture, remember, hold, these days of dense heat.

Photos are something, but they can't convey the sensations or sounds of deep summer. 

These late soporific afternoons and early evenings under the fig tree with sun on bare skin, dancing butterflies, bees in the agapanthus and lavender, the sound of wood pigeons in full throat, occasional lawn mowers or teenage parties in neighbouring gardens, Michel next door's sporadic hayfever sneezes, will be over; the chairs will need to be dragged under the house, the ripe figs will splatter on the bricks unwatched.

Above all the things I'll miss will be the sensual pleasures of not needing clothes, being able to walk around the garden, pottering or watering, naked or half-naked with the sun on my skin.

And being in the water - the feeling of my body moving through the water, floating, looking up always from the water at the leaves moving in the highest tree tops and these cloud formations that I could watch indefinitely. 

While I'm indulging already in summer nostalgia, lets not forget eating outside - seasonal mussels here with a bottle of Oncle Vincent brought back from the Bourgogne -

with the last of the sun just hitting the tallest tree tops -

and my last swim after dinner with these skies after 9 pm and my bare skin still warm in the water and air