heatwave | Guy Portman's Blog

The Summerhouse, The Gazebo & A One Day Heatwave.

Jul 31 2020

Recently, I have been feeling less like a writer and more like a labourer slash handyman, albeit one with dire DIY skills. It seemed that no sooner had I finished removing and burning a leylandii hedge than it was time to varnish the summerhouse. It took my friend and I twenty-two hours to put two coats on the exterior and one inside. There are just so many multiple-sided bits jutting out all over it, and the windows took an eternity to do.

Once the electricity is sorted, I will start using it as my office. That is the summerhouse dealt with, now for The Gazebo. The front cover is currently being designed and I look forward to unveiling it soon. The Gazebo consists of two darkly humorous stories. It is my seventh book.

The below is me posing with a honeysuckle, which is going to make a tree stump outside my front door more ascetically pleasing. That is the plan anyway.

It had been several decades since I saw a snake here in the UK. I stumbled across this grass snake on a walk the other day.

There is a one-day heatwave taking place today in much of the country. It feels like Chad out there. The temperature is currently 34C (93.2F). My dog has been seeking shade, as have I.

Hope you are all enjoying the hot weather, if you have hot weather that is. Have a great weekend.

The Week – the good, the bad & the ugly

Jul 26 2019

Another week bites the dust. I have just come back from a break in The Fens, and am now back at the grindstone trying to make up for lost time. For what it is worth I have categorised the week gone by into three categories.

The Good: There are few things as cathartic as being in the countryside. Here is a photo of a freshly cut Fens field taken shortly before the heatwave began in earnest.

More good … The local pub has Moretti on tap, and the butcher is of exceptional quality.

I wasn’t the only one enjoying The Fen food.

The Bad: I never thought I would live to see the day when it was 30C at 19:30 in Norfolk. I only remember a few days ever reaching that temperature when I was kid. Many will no doubt disagree, but it’s too hot for the UK in my humble opinion. And with the heat came the flies. There were so many on Monday, I could have been in Somalia.

More Bad … Sales of Necropolis and Sepultura (first two instalments in my black comedy trilogy) have been non-existent this past week. They had been performing okay of late. Hopefully this will be rectified soon. That’s called positive thinking.

The Ugly: My friends beat me in our air rifle target competition. Although I’ve had no practice of late it annoyed me immensely, especially considering we were using my gun.