Three glorious minutes
Is all you're gonna get
I write to you from the fetid armpit of this summer heatwave, which I am enduring in a house with two enormous dogs and a garden with artificial grass. The grass heats up in the sunshine and I’m pretty sure that it’s only going to take two more degrees for it to actually melt and turn the backyard into a pond of bubbling green plastic.
As you can probably tell, O Sensitive Reader, reading between the lines to divine my secret true feelings, I am a bit grumpy.
It’s not the heat so much as the house imprisonment. My brain needs constant perambulation in order to do anything other than lurk malevolently behind my face and make everything seem rubbish. Normally I would be up at 5am to take the dogs for a walk while it’s still cool enough, but the puppy has gone into season and isn’t allowed out, and she’s too little to stay in the house on her own, so all three of us are stuck here together.
I keep trying to tell them it’s not my fault, but from their point of view, life was great fun until I turned up and stopped all the walks and turned the heat on and made the grass boil. The older dog in particular despises me and everything that I stand for. She likes four things in this world: food, walks, belly rubs, and her friend Molly, a black lab who lives round the corner. In the last few days, two out of the four things have disappeared from her life and it isn’t fair! She didn’t ask to be born! (Well, I guess I could start feeding her again, might cheer her up.)
As I cannot leave the house and because I have no inner resources, my only entertainment has been going on the big internet shop and scrolling through five hundred different neck fans to find the best one.
All the neck fans in existence are made in China, but they all have really authentic English-sounding brand names, like Morelax and Hotboil and I’m actually too warm to invent any other brand names but you get the idea. I know that crap shite electronic goods from China are taking over the world and it’s probably some kind of plot by the CCCP to detonate our economy and crush our spirit and I don't want that but neither do I want a hot neck.
I enjoy having cool air blown under my ears while the white noise of the fan induces a trance-like effect in my brain. If I wear it long enough, I can actually feel myself beginning to have a breakthrough experience. At this point, the battery inevitably dies and I have to face the world with my plain non-attenuated head again.
When that happens, I go outside and have a splash around on my definitely British-made Joovmui splashpad. Well, I would, if it hadn’t exploded three minutes after I set it up. Those three minutes were glorious, though.
Anyway, all of this has made me realise that my longstanding dream of going to prison in order to get a bed and three square meals a day (and potentially a splash pad) and using the time to write an epic novel that shatters the hearts of millions and changes the course of global governance for the good is probably a non-starter. I’ve had three days’ house imprisonment in a pleasant suburban estate and I can barely write this completely trivial newsletter without wanting to throw my laptop out of a window.
Of course, if I did defenestrate my laptop, I would have to get a new one, and that would probably be a good thing, since this one is now very old and shonky and has lost its [letter that comes after x and y] key. This is only really a problem if I want to write about internet shopping or places where animals are kept or a killer chess move. But it’s a bad sign for my laptop in general. I may have to get myself a nice new Codtoop or Msoopix or Wownob from the online Chinese shopping mart. What could possibly go wrong.
My paying subscribers are so stylish, attractive, and charming, even in the heat. What’s their secret? Choosing to subscribe to the best newsletters, I'll warrant.
P.S. I have another substack! It’s absolutely nothing like this one. It’s about Ice Age art mysteries.
Definitely buy the Wownob - I hear they come with a free Chinese-made neck fan 😁 (very funny post, thanks for alleviating the boredom of the heat-arrest!)
Takes me back to 13 years living in Perth, Western Australia. No fucking thank you!
Hang in there! And use ice bricks wrapped in a tea towel like an anti hot water bottle.