Otterly Toast

Small detail from The Bookworm, published by Bloomsbury. Watercolour and ink. Actual size: 80 x 80 mm

It’s hot enough to melt a penguin.

I’m from that subset of life on planet Earth which doesn’t thrive in hot temperatures. You know - Brussels sprouts, peonies, hostas, polar bears and frogs. Dem’s my tribe. Weird as it may sound, I like being cold. Cold, I can deal with. Cold, I have enough woolly jumpers to swaddle the North face of the Eiger. However, heat is an altogether different thing. I panic when I can’t cool down. I detest hot nights in an airless bedroom ( airless due to not wishing to offer myself up as a feast for the midges of Caledonia, and thus keeping my windows sealed shut) where every surface feels pre-warmed, where I debate whether to go soak a sheet in the bath and wrap myself in it, where I long for cold seas, deep snow, frosty mornings and all things autumn/winter.

Nope. Too hot to play. I’m just going to hang out here in the massive shade cast by a wilting peony and give you serious quantities of stinkeye because None of This Is My Fault.

The prospect of summers where thirty degrees becomes the new baseline fills me full of dread. Not just for me, but for all of us. I don’t care if we’ll be able to grow grapes in the hedgerows of Auchenlochtermuchty and mangoes down t’allotment, I’m not interested in becoming a NuMediterranean while the original version turns into a desert. No thanks.

This has not always been the case. At some point in my life, it was as if a switch was thrown. Sun-basking lizard me turned into ice-craving penguin me. It felt like a total personality change. Like I’d had a Snow Queen Transplant without knowing it. One year I was blithely offering up my Italian skin to every ray of sunshine available, and the next, I was swathed in uv resistant clothing and sliding from one patch of shade to the next. Grumpily, I might add. Very grumpily.

Nowadays, I feel the blare of the sun like a personal attack. Before I’m consigned to the grumpy old woman dustbin of invisibility, can I just say that I love blue skies, love blossomy, perfumy verdant nature, love gentle breezes and being able to sit outside with a drink at the end of a day - all of these summery things - I can’t get enough of them, but when they’re accompanied by that huge merciless white disc, beating down on all of us below? Eughhhhh.

It doesn’t help that by lunchtime, my studio is too hot to work in, and if I open doors and windows, in come every single one of the wasps and bluebottles of East Lothian, all equally delighted to gain access to their favourite watering hole. And there’s nothing quite like the intermittent buzz of a bluebottle to throw me off my stride when I’m trying to write. Oh, hang on, there is. It’s the neeeeeeeeeeee whine of an enraged wasp that I’ve tried to evict from my watercolour dishes when I’m painting.

One year, the wasps actually built a nest in the eaves, which makes perfect sense ( to a wasp) given the the abundance of paper and relative peace inside my studio.

Anyhoo. It’s been a week. Here in the Yooky, we’ve had yet another change of captain at the helm, we’re living through unprecedented everything, every visit to the supermarket brings yet another squeak of dismay ( ‘ow much?) and I’m still drying rose petals by the bushel for eldest daughter’s upcoming woodland wedding. Well, I have to do something.

For now, here’s this week’s comic. I’m still no further forward with digital image manipulation software mainly because I can’t face the interface. I need to have drunk more than one cup of coffee and had several good night’s sleep before I am in the right head space to engage with World ‘O Dweeb. Or whatever it’s called. Ugh. I am so analogue.

Otterly Toast: Ink and pencil, made by hand by me in an overheated studio in Scotland.