August
Summer is coming to an end but there are moments when it feels like it’s starting all over, like the sun is only just reaching its apogee. After a storm, the days are hot and the nights are warm. Skies are the colour of well-worn denim, evening clouds are lambent with a peachy glow. On a Tuesday that stars off damp, there are plans to eat chips, aioli and champagne on a friend’s balcony that’s tucked behind the harbour. The sun will glower shyly over the town as it sets. I see on an Instagram flashback that exactly eight years ago we did exactly the same thing, except sitting on a boat in the harbour itself. Our past selves were in different places. I think about how not much has changed since, for me anyway, and I wonder whether that’s good or bad… I’m often thinking about time, how I sometimes wish it away, wanting to fast forward to the future. I recently learnt that on Venus a day is longer than a year (its rotation being so slow as it goes round the sun). It spins the opposit...
