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Miasmic torpor

JULY 27 06

The humid day punctuated by five minute torrential downpours that promise much as the thunder cracks across the sky but in next to no time it is a sunny day again with the droplets on foliage quickly evaporating in a steam bath. Eight or so Painted Lady butterflies fluttering about the buddleia, most years never even see one. And sitting inside smells waft in through the open window that I haven't smelt in decades and I wonder where they can possibly have come from. Such as the smell my Hornby 00 gauge metal model steam locomotives made after they been round the track a few times. I'd lift them off the rails and turn them upside down and smell the electric motor, it was an attractive smell. And the long humid days with little let-up somehow remind me of the long stretched-out days of childhood. It is as if something strange has happened, as if the world has been enveloped in a miasma, a slowing down of time almost to the point of offering a second chance to make something of a life mostly wasted. A cave off the world, a dank atmosphere and the necessity to run a fan all day long like some lethargic Paraguayan, coming from somewhere the music of a 50s scifi movie evoking black and white memories of days when the world was a ripe plum and you didn't want for anything if you had an apple, a piece of string, and a magnifying glass for burning your name in a bit of wood.

All today I have had company. The Poplar Hawk-moth has been stationed quite still on the drawstring of the blind in the bathroom. He left through the open window at dusk, after the storms had cleared. I photographed him on my finger this morning. I got quite a shock actually. When I got up for a piss about 8 in the morning I saw he had left his position of last night and I assumed he had gone out the open window, but as I took my blurry visage to the sink I was startled to see him holding onto the shaving mirror. He walked onto my finger with no trouble, he had a good solid cling, like an owl on the arm. I was surprised how he held onto my finger without the slightest worry. I have to say he seemed quite a superior creature and I spent a long time looking him over closely before going back to bed.