Looking up at the grey temperate sky on Thursday, and feeling the cool breeze, there was no sense of a return to normal after the Anthropocene heat of Monday and Tuesday. More a sense of being in remission for a terminal prognosis we are not doing enough to avert. Embrace it as it slips away.

The flowers on our straggly rose bush out the back have been seared into dry fossils.

The banks of wild flowers along the side of the park have been scorched into thickets of tinder.

The grass is bleached to its roots in widening bowls of dust. A few patches of green in the shade of the trees.

Down by the shops, people have directed their feet to the shady side of the street; a rapidly learned habitual reflex.

In a reflection of the times, in Iceland a display of energy drinks from Tyson Fury, with a picture of the man himself looking like a berserker, encourages us to drink the drink so we can “hit the day hard”. Just what we need.

J’s cousin died of a heart attack in the heat on Tuesday. He had Covid at the time. And underlying conditions. So, one of the vulnerable, discountable ones.

At the chemists, Rishi Sunak is on the TV talking about all the challenges facing the country. He does not mention the climate. Crisis? What crisis?

On the front Page of the Daily Telegraph in the Kingsbury library, Liz Truss “tells France to fix holiday travel chaos” (my emphasis) which is laugh out loud ironic. I suspect the response from the Elysée will be “Pfff!”

Outside Holocene Court, the new set of “Luxury 2 and 3 bedroom apartments with basement parking” down on the Edgware Road, there’s one of those hologram type images of the future when the building is finished showing gridlock in both directions up and down the road. And no new trees.