25 Jul 2026
issue 25 July 2026
Comments
Competition 3459 invited you to submit a passage that lavishly depicted a heatwave. The entries accumulated languorously, replete with detail – occasionally so excessive that one almost suspected the involvement of AI. Anyway it was enjoyable to wallow in these writings. Frank Upton, Sue Pickard, David Harris, J.C.H. Mounsey, John O’Byrne, Basil Ransome-Davies, D.A. Prince (and others besides) deserve honourable mentions, but the £25 vouchers go to those below.
A summer Lord of Misrule, Heatwave hath come into his estate, evicting cloud, curtailing rainfall, consigning long trouser, counterpane and necktie to laughable if temporary obsolescence. Feel his warmth unbuttoning your apparel, loosening your morals. For who wouldst not sooner recline in blissful torpor in His sun-bathed garden than toil at coaxing scorched provender therefrom? Heatwave abolisheth alike learning and labour, making ovens of offices, buckling railways and sending hay fever likewise to examinee and invigilator. A benign dictator, Heatwave’s sole diktat is ‘Holiday!’ No beach stretches lonesome on his watch, for he calls forth ten million ladybirds to supplement such tens of thousands of us as he calls to assemble thereon. Time itself Heatwave slows for our better appreciation, days lasting weeks and weeks months as the sun itself extends the duration and intensity of its dominion. Make thy welcome rapturous as thou wilt, Heatwave shalt outstay it.
