Tuesday 16 August 2022
The title of this post came to me one lazy Saturday afternoon in late July, between one nap and another, after a morning spent at the beach. It made me smile as I jotted it down, thinking it would make a perfect title for my memoir - that is, if I ever decided to write one. Needless to say, we have had an endless supply of sunshine since May, although it did rain quite heavily last week. The cicadas, on the other hand, didn't make themselves heard until around mid-July. I read somewhere that the temperature has to rise to at least 35C before they start screeching. Now it seems like they will never stop. My grandparents' generation, who never used a thermometer or any other scientific means of measuring temperature, used to say that the heat peaks around the 10th of August, on the feast of Saint Laurence - and, most years, they have been proved right.
This year though, it seems that the temperature peaked and plateaued, and it takes all my energy to drag myself upright to do the simplest of chores. Reading and wasting time on Instagram seem to be all I'm capable of at the moment but I'll believe in the old tradition that says that cooler days are ahead.n I just hope we don't have to wait too much longer.
It has been a strange sort of summer. Even though the days of the pandemic seem to be well and truly over, I still seem to prefer staying indoors. It has become a habit. Not a bad one but I need to get out and about more. Because if I don't I won't have anything interesting to write about will I? And I am sure you are all getting tired of my book reviews by now.
Operation Pedestal 80th Anniversary
Yesterday was the 80th anniversary of Operation Pedestal. On August 15th 1942, a badly damaged ship named the SS Ohio limped into Grand Harbour supported by two destroyers, Ledbury and Penn, and delivered a precious cargo of fuel, ammunition and grain to the Maltese population and the British forces. The island was on the brink of surrendering but the supplies delivered by the Ohio, and the rest of the flotilla that made up Operation Pedestal, ensured that it would continue to fight on. Embarrassingly, no official commeration was organized locally and, were it not for Heritage Malta and a local re-enactment group, this important event in our history would have been completely forgotten.
TV Shows
We've been enjoying the latest adaption of veterinarian James Herriot's memories in All Creatures Great And Small. It is a throwback to a different era. I always look back at the 1930s and envy the slow, sheltered life that most people lived during that time. Of course, the second World War ended all that but, in my imagination, the 30s were like a golden era of innocence, wholesomeness and good manners. Yes, I admit to being guilty of looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses. I am sure there were plenty of things which were completely awful. I should have listened more closely to what my grandmother's used to complain about instead of basing my opinion on a couple of TV series like this one and The Durrells.
Another show we're enjoying at the moment is Harrow, the story of a forensic pathologist with an unorthodox approach to solving his cases. It is quite graphic at times so it may not be to everyone's tastes.
I'll leave it at that for today. I must plan my posts better because this one seems to be a bit all-over-the-place. As usual, I am going to blame it on the heat.
