way. too. hot.

There was a distinctly Saturdayish feel to everything today. Mostly because I was off work using up the excess holidays I can't carry forward to the next holiday year (which runs, for reasons best known to my work's HR department, from June to June) but partly because everyone else seemed to be off too and was sitting or lying around on the grass in the Meadows rather than being engaged in the work or study to which they should have been attending. Fortunately it was too hot or too early or they had too little time on their lunchbreaks for anyone to have started filling the already-overwarm air with the stench of smouldering charcoal, singed meatstuffs and the smell of whatever the portable barbecue trays were placed on by people who haven't used one before and didn't think to put it on stones or bricks. It was too hot for me even in the shade except for in the few places where buildings messed with the air and created the occasional nice cool draught.

During the summer it is far from unknown for cinemas to be excessively hot, especially when they're in near-constant use and at full capacity during the film festival when the fire escapes are occasionally opened to let out the smell of sweat. However, during a non-festive period on an extremely sunny day when the majority of the population forgets that the sun is DANGEROUS and spurns the indoors middle-of-the-day screenings are often pleasantly empty and up until the curtain opened I thought I'd be the only person (in the main screen, too) until an old woman and her assistant appeared and started whispering to each other in an extremely audible way. There was no-one else at whom they might have thought I was glowering at each time I turned round so they possibly were too busy babbling like idiots to notice. After the first film I had another though it was better-attended and in a smaller auditorium and had a much more interesting soundtrack including a bit which sounded like it was played on whatever you call an instrument consisting of a tableful of variously-partially-filled glassware whose rims are rubbed to create the sorts of noises glasses make when partially-filled and made to squeak. Good film, though the pipe-smoking central character doesn't do the healthy-Norwegian stereotype any favours and detracts from the story by constant worry about how much he must smell, especially when smoking in a confined train carriage.