It’s too hot

It is. Come on. It isn’t just me is it?

I think the worst part of it is that the wind is having itself a day off, which it certainly didn’t clear with any of us first, cheeky sod. A lovely bit of breeze would be just champion right now, but it’s off elsewhere. No doubt somewhere cool. Instead we’re just left with the wind’s creepy arch-nemesis, humidity. I can feel it’s sweaty hands all over me while it whispers threatening sweet nothings in my ears. In my head it resembles Chris Moyles. In a cape.

Correct. I am not.

It thundered a bit earlier. That was just cruel. It had all the hallmarks of one of those huge bastard summer storms that gets the world back on an even keel; I was ready to go and stand outside in my just pants getting soaked, grinning like an idiot in just his pants. Then it seemed to get bored and wander off, maybe the wind is having a party somewhere and the thunder was just passing through on its way, necking Lambrini and shouting.

As a nation we’re a bit obsessed with the weather, but very much in the same way we’re obsessed with Simon Cowell. We’ll religiously follow the weather and what it’s up to simply in order to be angered by it and shout about how shit it is, a bit like I’m doing now.

30 degrees, glorious sunshine, not a breath of wind? “Eugh, too hot, why can’t it at least bloody snow?”

-10 degrees, snow laying like my favourite type of pizza (deep pan, crisp and even. lol.)? “I can’t wait for summer.”

Perhaps it’s then unsurprising that various elements of our weather system are deserting us. There’s just no pleasing us, no matter what the weather tries to do we’re not satisfied. This must be how Piers Morgan feels.

It’s still too hot though. Bloody weather. Why can’t it snow?

Book Review: Three Feet of Sky (Book 1)

Yes, a book review. I’m branching out. Hush.

Being of a Kindle disposition, I am now up to a solid 2-3 books a week, many of which are utter beans thanks to Amazon’s ropey recommendation system and over-reliance on the kind of people who review books to gauge popularity (<—– irony).

Three Feet of Sky, thankfully, is not one of those books.

I stumbled upon the novel almost completely by accident, trawling the depths of the fiction department until I found something with a vaguely entertaining title and/or premise and/or under 2 quid.

Three Feet of Sky, thankfully, is one of those books.

Three Feet of Sky as it appears on Kindle. It’s quite the looker.

The story centres around a depressive recovering drunk called Adam Eden, which allows for a number of shameless puns from the author. Always a plus. To avoid embarrassing himself in a Portsmouth pub, Adam inadvertently chooses death, which occurs around page 10.

It then transpires that death is just the beginning for Adam Eden, which is good because it would have been an extremely short book were that the case. After a brief and painful purgatory session, Adam arrives in an artificially created afterlife thousands of years in the future where the essences of past souls are resurrected and auctioned, to be sold into Environments (viros), where they will live out an immortal existence in recreations of the physical optimum of their previous bodies. With me?

In an attempt to avoid key spoilers I’ll leave the detail at that. Suffice to say we’re taken on a bit of an adventure ride encompassing serial killers, nudity, glam rock, an in-depth knowledge of fragrances and possibly the most bizarre form of future prediction it’s possible to dream up.

The novel’s key strength lies in the style. There are parts that are ludicrous, parts that are fantastical, parts that are unbelievably gory, yet it all seems…grounded. Where a lot of sci-fi (loose term) loses out by getting too far away from the reader, Three Feet of Sky has a wonderful knack of staying within the realms of plausibility, no matter how implausible the situation being described is. Another paradoxical plus is the book’s ability to blend heavy topics – death, murder, resurrection, chronic masturbation, the list is endless – with a light touch. Nothing is over-elaborate, and it gives the text a great flow. Characters are just formed enough for you to have a stake in what happens to them, but not painted out in full minutiae which helps the whole thing nicely. Oh yes, it’s also got a few moments of comedy gold in it too, as well as the aforementioned shit puns which are actually a bonus for me.

So nicely, in fact, that I ploughed through all 250 pages in about five hours.

Just one thing, it’s probably not one for the ultra-squeamish. The violence is more cartoon than Khartoum, but you are warned.

To sum up, Three Feet of Sky is much like a goat’s cheese and pomegranate salad. It’s light yet satisfying, surprising and a tiny bit surreal. You won’t be sure if you’ll like it, but once you get stuck into it you’ll wonder where it’s been all your life.

Hey, that actually worked!

Henceforth I will be rating books based on which foodstuff they are most like.

Three Feet of Sky food comparison rating: Goat’s cheese and pomegranate salad (with balsamic dressing for a bit of a kick)