Monday 7 July

For obvious reasons I am presently keeping myself indoors, although for everyone else there is a motivation just as chilling: a ponderous anthem of dehumanizing rain for the second consecutive summer. If this is the slow, global toasting of which the experts speak, where’s the upside of the muffin? Where are the summer frocks and gauze pantaloons; the mere snips of garments designed to illuminate – through blinding flashes of pale skin – the seasonal dancing in the streets? I certainly haven't seen them. And when I have had cause to rummage around Miss Jordan's unnecessarily large chest (pinching her mothballs or borrowing that rubberized rolling pin) I find her outfits almost too petite to sate my nostalgia for the swimsuits of summers past.

The weather at this year’s Beechin’ Festival, Chorlton, was conducive to sitting round a solid oak table, holding hands with those not already struck by lightening. But despite the pleasure taken in briefing Ella, Erick’s long-term ladyfriend, on his numerous faults; in entertaining Mimi’s youngster with tales of untimely pet death, not all of life’s acts can be played out in the pub (one weeps). And so I must thank Tattetta for her soggy weeknight invites to numerous theatrical follies, in advance of her brooding reviews. Like Old Abe across in America, I feel the stressful preoccupations of the day quickly ebbing away once safely in my seat, however stimulating the person beside me or amusing those opposite, taking aim, having raided the props cupboard in jest.