The air is rich with ions. The gods must be displeased.

It is super hot in London today - proper oh-Jesus-I'm-melting hot.  It's tough for the English to cope in weather like this as they like to keep a lid on their emotions by-and-large, but that's impossible.  The simplest physical task in this heat requires herculean will-power.  By the time I cycled home last night, I was like a rag doll.  Unfortunately, Mrs O was out carousing with colleagues, so I had cook the tea when all I wanted to do was lie down and have a good tremble.  Thanks to my massive reserves of stoicism and heart I did manage to throw together a Spanish omelette before the tears came.

And I speak as one of the fitter members of the populace.  If I'm struggling, I shudder to think how the flabby rotters are getting on.  Needless to say, it will be carnage in the pubs of the capital tonight.  People will be pouring rubbing alcohol in their ears.  It doesn't help that the weather's supposed to break tomorrow, so the window of crapulent opportunity is small.  He who hesitates is lost.

The one upside to the humidity and the heat was that there was an almighty and spectacular electrical storm in the small hours.  The noise was unimaginable.  Even London falls silent for a few hours in the dead of night, so the peals of thunder rang out like you would not believe.  I thought in my dozing alpha wave state that the roof was about to fly off.

Back to normal tomorrow - wet and miserable.  Ho hum.

And...collapse

So, the first day back at work after a busy and vee-enjoyable bank-holiday weekend, and don't I know it.  I slept like a corpse last night.  Usually, it takes me at least three hours to drop off, but last night I genuinely don't remember a thing between kicking off the memory-foam slippers en route to the mattress and the alarm clock screaming its tits off at 7.20 this morning.  The bedside lamp was still on when I woke up, implying that I must have fainted rather than fallen asleep in the traditional manner.

Despite all the shut-eye, I was super knackered right from the bully-off.  I managed to get through the rituals of breakfast and dressing myself on instinct and caffeine alone, but quickly ran out of juice.  I even had to have a lie down before leaving the house.  I'm no general practitioner, but that cannot be right, can it?  I really should have 'phoned work and told them to sod off, but that's not the kind of attitude that gets you on the Apollo Program, is it?

I am no stranger to chronic fatigue.  I blame my bio-rhythms, which are all-to-cock when compared with polite society.  When they're preparing for bed, I'm settling down in front of an episode of Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation" with a half a bottle of rioja and a bag of monkey nuts for company.  I've always been like this.

When I was boy, we had a cat called Tibby.  I remember heading-off for school one morning.  There was snow on the ground, and as I mooched forlornly off I spotted the Tibster curled-up in front of the gas fire in the front room, utterly oblivious.  "You jammy get," I remember thinking.  I could have wept.

 In fact cats have a rare old time of matters generally, don't they?  The favourable shift-patterns notwithstanding, they are the masters of their own ships in every conceivable way.  I sometimes look at dogs, and feel sorry for them.  They're like children: they go out when they're told to; they're always accompanied by an adult, and they can't feed themselves.  I often look at my friends' chocolate Labrador and sense her thinking "I could absolutely murder a sausage."  She's got more chance of flapping her ears and taking off, the poor cow.

Your cat, on the other hand, is like an undergraduate: he comes and goes as he pleases, sleeps 14 hours a day and eats when and what he wants.  If a cat wakes up hungry and it's several hours before the Whiskas gets an airing, he simply leaps out window and bags himself a pigeon or a tit.