It was hot, it was dry, it was a British heatwave. It was pretty uncomfortable. Just a blip in the weather, or a foretaste of what was to come? On this Day 547 of the daily poems, our poet Janice Dempsey takes us back in time …
Summer 1976
Each morning we rise
with foreign insouciance, casting
a cursory glance at the unchanging sky,
sure of the beat of the sun but exhausted
by the heat of a sleepless night;
electric fans have vanished from the shops.
Standpipes are in place on the east coast;
the radio is scare-mongering
and making promises, the farmers
praying and making only hay;
the children playing in seas that never were
so crowded, in August before or after.
The end when it comes is not a bang
but small clouds gathering on a horizon
long ignored except by sailors
and desperate gardeners, then
the gradual slide into normal,
damp October, and we go back
to scanning the weather forecasts
and carrying umbrellas.
Janice Dempsey
in her collection ‘Remembering the Future’ (D&W 2024)