Out of doors*

While our son works through the heatwave for his exams,

I remember the many years

that I spent trying to revise in similar weather conditions.

It was futile of course.

I used to sit out on the baking asphalt balcony

with a text book slipping from my grasp

and the red sun pulsating behind my heavy eyelids.

Summer, after all our weary waiting, is here at last...

On one of these days, leaning out of the window after breakfast

and sniffing ecstatically at perfection, you decide that

it would be a crime to sit indoors at a writing table

on a morning like this: you will take your work

out into the garden and do it there.

What could be a pleasanter and a nobler occupation 

than to sit in the sunshine, green grass beneath your feet,

balmy zephyrs playing with your hair, 

the scent of flowers in every breath you take,

and to write immortal poetry - or even,

for that matter, perishable prose.

But then the snags manifest themselves.

The dewy grass soaks your shoes, the balmy zephyrs, 

flutter the corners of the paper you are writing on 

and scatter the lawn with pages you have already finished...

The sun is the greatest possible hindrance to the profession of letters.

Its light, reflected from the white paper, dazzles the eyes;

its warmth lulls the brain and saps resolution. 

Lids tend to close, coherent thoughts to 

relapse into random daydreaming.

It takes a stern effort of will to write as many as

fifty words without a break...

Lastly there is the garden itself:

and this is the most distracting thing of all...

It is dramatic: things are happening all the time,

clamouring for your attention.

Look again after five minutes, and a big hairy poppy bud,

which was recently all green, is slashed with scarlet.

In another quarter of an hour the crumpled silk

will be bursting right out of it.

*from A Pocketful of Pebbles by Jan Struther