How do you like your brandy, sir? - In a glass.

It's been humid for a few days in old London town, not humid in a traditional summer sense, just a little damper than we're used to.  Despite the discomfort this brings, I welcome it.  It's June, for the love of Jesus, it's supposed to be humid.  When I was a boy (here we go...), summers were excruciating in their humidity.  Not now though - something happened to the jet stream or something in 2006 and the weather went to heck in a handcart.

At least when it's hot and humid, you feel like you've lived every moment, even if you've actually spent the entire day playing Tetris on your computer at work.  Typing-up vanilla meeting minutes is autumnal work, like putting semi-conscious tortoises into garden sheds or eating roasted tubers.  No, humidity is good.  It's difficult to sleep, but you can pretend you're Philip Marlowe whilst you toss and turn.  If it's too hot to sleep, I'll sometimes get up and sit alone in the kitchen until the small hours, wearing nothing but a trilby and sipping cold tea from a highball tumbler.  It's just as well summers in the UK are short, or I'd crack due to lack of sleep.

As it's not too miserable out, I took a wander down to the river at Westferry at lunchtime.  There is nothing more soothing than the sound of The Thames at slack water.  It lulls me in seconds, my mood notwithstanding.  You can take the boy out of London....