"it's June after all & you're young until September"—Ocean Vuong

"I decided not to use any color until I couldn’t get along without it, and I believe it was June before I needed blue."—Georgia O’Keeffe, Some Memories of Drawings (1988)

We’re in the midst of a heatwave (well, for Ireland), three weeks so far, with rain coming on Saturday to reassure us of its inevitability. The sunlight is so strong, it stings. It's hard to concentrate. I switch between work emails and a Guardian interview with Deborah Levy. Sometimes I read a book on the steps of the pre-fab office, Sam panting under my elbow, snorting at 18-year-old Charles Darwin's father’s remonstration of his son after he abandons his medical studies: "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family."

Like young Darwin, I am not amounting to anything these days, passing languidly through the hours in a hungover, bug-bitten state. I don wispy cotton dresses, my summer wardrobe, as if they're costumes, not recognising the tan, moisturised, bare-shouldered person in the mirror. I'm playing, I think, at being this creature attuned to good weather and backyard drinking and ice cream every day. I play so much, I am almost that creature. Almost.

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