Yesterday was dominated by one important visit that I needed to make. Eight years ago I was successfully treated for a polyp in my colon which had turned cancerous but was itself picked up by routine monitoring and subsequently the NHS had offered monitoring of my GI (gastro-intestinal tract) One such monitoring event took place about a month ago and as a result of this the endoscopist has identified another polyp which looked a little suspicious. Yesterday, I saw a colorectal surgeon who explained to me that the offending polyp was not cancerous but the histology (tissue examination) indicated that it might become so in the yeas ahead. So I was offered the option of doing nothing and leaving it to chance or having it removed in a few weeks time. I must have taken little more than half a second for me to choose the latter option and the words of the surgeon were to the effect that I was still a young man but if I chose to ignore it, then I might have problems in later years that I would choose to regret. But I have to say that this is the NHS at its finest i.e. monitoring and treating conditions before they become much more serious. The weather yesterday was the hottest June day ever recorded and I was in two minds whether to cancel the appointment but, in the event, was very pleased that I did not cancel my appointment but instead received the news that I did. The weather forecasters are indicating that it is possible that it is possible that yesterday’s record June temperature may even be exceeded today so we have about a couple of days more of extreme weather through which to navigate ourselves. My Tai Chi has texted each member of her class to take soundings whether or not to hold a class this week, as a result of which the class has been cancelled as I suspect that most of us want to stay safe indoors. My American friend and I decided in a conversation that it was too hot even for an early evening walk in the park as the temperature was still in the 30’s (C) and she also informed me that the Ukrainian lunch time event, normally held on the last Friday of each month, had been cancelled as the Ukrainians themselves did not feel inclined to cook in a hot kitchen and felt that the meal would probably be badly attended in any case. So my friend has decided to come round to my house midday when we can prepare a salad lunch together and keep cool with the assistance of a large fan that I keep in my lounge in the bottom of the house. At her suggestion, I have even located a copy of the Scrabble board game that had hunted out in a trip to a charity shop in the hope, vain as it turned out, that Meg and I would be able to share in this game in her declining few months. Last night’s football turned out to be less than entertaining. After a pedestrian first half, Canada and Switzerland finally made something of a game of it with the Swiss eventually running out as 2:1 winners. I was disinclined to watch the Scotland vs. Brazil game but as I was going to bed in a hot bedroom decided to watch a few minutes of it only to see the Scots make a huge defensive error and give away the softest of goals to their Brazilian opponents within the first five minutes, after which I decided that I would rather sleep than watch the rest of the game.
The hot weather, having scrubbed out my Tai Chi class this week, left me with the prospect of a nice quiet morning but I decided to make the best of it. The back lawn was in desperate need of a cut and I know this only takes about 20 minutes. So before the sun got too high and whilst the inclination of the sun was such that much of the back garden was shaded by the bushes, I ventured out to give the lawn a mow at 9.30 in the morning when the temperature was a ‘mere’ 25° C. I have never cut the lawns so early in the day before but, there again, we are experiencing record temperatures day by day, I rather expected that work might cease in the building site at the bottom of my garden in view of the extreme heat but the activity and associated noise seems to be just the same. As I was cleaning up the mower, prior to putting it away, I heard the sound of another lawn mower from a distant neighbour so the same thought must have occurred to both of us. We have been warned to expect some spectacular thunderstorms probably within day and so this was another incentive to get the lawn cut before the downpours begin. A rather macabre thought occurred to me which I will discuss with my American friend when she calls around. If her aged 95 year old mother had been alive as well as Meg with her rapidly declining health then both of us might have been faced with the most difficult time keeping both of them hydrated and cool and it is not beyond the possibilities that our respective loved ones might have succumbed to the extreme heat and would we have blamed ourselves for it? I have just read the horrifying statistic that in France there have 40 drowning deaths recorded in the last week alone. Whilst we all have to ‘tunnel through’ the current heatwave, the much more pressing questions is how much more we need to invest as a society to counteract the heatwaves of the future which, with rampant global warming are only going to intensify. I would really like to see our media dragging prominent climate-change deniers in front of the TV cameras and asked to justify their denial claims in the light of all the scientific evidence and the evident distress of millions of us across Europe. Because of its land mass, the heatwave seems to be much worse in France. At least 101 million people in Europe are expected to experience temperatures in excess of 35C on Thursday, including 50 million in France, as an intense heatwave sweeping the continent continues. Spain is reporting an excess of 200 heat-related deaths as well.