Day 64: Like frogs in the rain

Yet another hot one. The heat was a wall, it had a physicality, it pressed up against you and lay across you and forced you downwards. I sat in a chair out on the patio with my back against the kitchen door, completely still, and I raised my arm to turn the page of my book and already I was sweating.

But it was good. Good to have a day off, good to read, good to just do nothing. I came in when the temperature became too oppressive and I wrote a little and played the new Zelda and waited for Fran.

I love the new Zelda, Breath of the Wild. The subtitle is apposite. The game engenders adventure and exploration better than almost anything else I've played. I love creeping through forests seeing what there is to see, and then a rainstorm sets in and raindrops plop down through the leaves and everything is wet and sounds are muffled and the frogs come out and you can catch the frogs. I love riding my horse through open fields with the wind rustling the grass and a few delicate notes from the main theme are introduced into the score and you want more but there isn't more and you ride and ride and the land passes beneath you. I love climbing up as high as I can get and looking out at the vast landscape splayed below, seeing sleepy towns nestled in the distance, rivers, mysterious rock formations, and thinking that it all is out there, all alive, and you are above it for a moment, removed, looking in -- and then you leap and pull your paraglider and you soar downwards wanting to find the moment when you enter that world you were just above but you cannot, it is one long moment and it is always now and you are gliding and then you are touching ground and you are back inside the great roving thing of life and you are off running to your next fabulous adventure.

So that was my afternoon before Fran arrived. When she turned up, having shaken off her hangover, we went to the shop and bought ingredients for Mexican wraps and then came home and napped together and made the food and ate the food, and then came upstairs with bowls of Vienetta and good strong Yorkshire tea and watched the 100 on Amazon Video and lounged in bed. The survivors of the 100 had to defend their new home from the Grounders by bombing a bridge and Fran kept rising onto her knees and putting her hands between her legs and clutching pillows because she was too anxious about whether Raven would die and what would happen between Clarke and Finn and who would make it through.

The series is trash. It's young-adult, post-Hunger Games silliness, dumb and formulaic, but it's also great. Sometimes you just want to switch off and sip Yorkshire tea and lie in bed with your girlfriend watching silly television, you know?

So that's what I'm going back to do. Good night.