Another delayed post.
11th October 2017
It’s about five-thirty, a hot and humid late afternoon. The sun is quite low, sloping in at 45 degrees or so, but its heat is still weirdly strong as I step out into the garden. I potter for a while, bending, straightening, dead-heading, snipping.
Then, out of nothing, a quick patter and rustle around me, and spots of coolness on the back of my white work-shirt. I straighten up.
After three months, it is raining.
The sun continues to beam hotly from the south-west as the rain intensifies. I crane my neck to see a rare sight, a grey cloud directly above, slowly heading north.
‘It’s raining, it’s raining!’ I enthuse, but the dog has headed indoors.
I hurry to turn over the cushions on the garden chairs, and fuss about in wonderment for a while. But it’s over quickly – before the dots and spots on the tiles of the terrace have had a chance to join together, the rain has stopped.
Very interesting, what an afternoon you had, but at the top there, are you sure ‘weirdly’ works? You just mean that it was unseasonably hot, yes?
When I get right down to it, you mean? No actually, I don’t ‘mean’ that, whatever ‘mean’ means.
Fine, just trying to help.
And it makes no sense anyway.
Don’t start, of course it makes sense.
It has no meaning.
Everyone knows what it means. It’s even in the dictionary.
But unseasonably hot means that the heat was unseasonable, doesn’t it?
Obviously.
Well, also obviously, when something is called unseasonable, that means, and only means, that it cannot be seasoned. ‘Unseasonably hot’ thus means that the afternoon was so hot that it couldn’t be seasoned. And since an afternoon is not something that can be seasoned in the first place, the expression is meaningless.
You’ve lost me a while ago there. Listen, it’s clear to me and everyone else what it means, and it would have made things a lot clearer if you’d just used it in the first place.
Thanks for your views. I’ll give them some thought.
The First Sign of Madness 