Eva Wiseman: ‘Summer is always a shock, and we never learn’

I always forget. In the dankest chilliest moments of January, when I’m in three cardigans and those socks made of something like moss, working with a blanket draped over my chattering fingertips, I dream of summer, but always forget this uncomfortable reality. All realities are uncomfortable, I’m learning, which is why I move increasingly to promote fantasy. And summers are framed both for and from fantasies. The summers in my head, for example, are formed from a collage of holiday snaps, Famous Five picnics, American coming-of-age films, and the one time I successfully napped in the garden. They are blue skies and lazy breezes and romance, rather than the dusty sweat and desperate fury we witness every July, without fail. I’m getting things wrong as the heat rises. I’m embarrassing myself. I bought the wrong fan. Voting for my top films of the century I forgot anyone would see it and wrote down Stepbrothers 10 times.

Last night my family was woken at 4am, and we knew it was 4am because the woman screaming at her boyfriend outside kept repeating it. “IT’S 4 AM! IT’S 4AM! YOU’RE ONLY COMING HOME AT 4AM?” He soon pissed off again towards the station, which, unsurprisingly, made her even angrier. I peered, one eyed, out of the window. The light is curious at 4am on a summer’s night – pale and shallow, the stuff of migraines and breakups. I couldn’t see the woman, though she sounded like she was pacing down the path off our street, near the alley where, mid-afternoon last week on a blazing Sunday, someone let off a firework or small bomb and the whole house shuddered. I pictured her in pyjamas. Or, what passes for pyjamas on a hot night – knickers and a T-shirt she got in a team-building exercise in 2003, maybe. She was phoning the boyfriend now, who for some mad reason picked up? “THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!” she howled. I heard my cat wake up and moodily stalk down the hall, and then my daughter. It was funny, I thought, while lying very still and trying to trick my body back to sleep, that the woman was screaming what all the neighbours were thinking.

Her screams had a familiar bloody and ragged intensity, a little like the Chinese TikTok woman aghast at British heat. “I don’t understand why you’re angry,” the boyfriend seemed to be saying, to which she replied, “STOP SAYING YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND! STOP SAYING YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!” I went quietly around the house, shutting windows. I understand, I wanted to say. I get it! Bad boyfriends get worse in direct proportion to the temperature. And no wonder you’re screaming hoarsely into a suburban dawn – you thought he was dead! All day you dragged yourself through this muddy heat, all night you sat by the fan and fretted about his safety. I understand! Now please, hush. Then we heard, “I’M GOING TO CHUCK ALL YOUR STUFF OUT OF THE WINDOW.” Repeated.

I put a pillow over my eyes. And then, “I’M GOING TO BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE.” Perhaps I should have called the police, but I didn’t want to add to the terrible summer vibe, wanted to trust that the warmth hadn’t infected her to the point where she’d add fire to heat like this. Instead, I lay very still and wondered if I could smell smoke, and then morning came.

Part of it, of course, part of the horror, is that summer is always a shock, and we never learn. The doorbell rings at the end of June and oh, what’s this, a giant wooden horse? Didn’t order it, but fab, whatever, I love gifts and it looks shiny, let’s wheel it into the living room and ignore the giggling coming from inside its belly. Summer flounces into cities just like that, all glittering and glamorous, only to very quickly explode and attack – your appearance, energy, attitude, creating small humiliations of romance or violence that you wade into and can’t escape.

Don’t get me wrong – if it were life or death I’d still choose this hell any day, the grim sweat of a city in summer over its tight and frigid winters, but at some point, surely, shouldn’t we have adapted, evolved, so the humidity doesn’t take us out entirely? I feel like I’m one hot afternoon away from screaming dawn down in the street. And honestly, my cat has seen enough.

Too clever by half These days, I find myself on a perpetual quest for tech that is capable but basic – my nightmare, for instance, is a fridge that talks to me. I’d argue that nobody needs their washing machine to be smarter than they are, and have never understood the problem with turning lights on with a… switch. When I had my second child I had to really search for a baby monitor that didn’t also feature video or wifi. And as my eldest got into pop music I had to really work to find her a way to listen without having a smartphone (she got a CD player, fine). Now, as she prepares for secondary school, I’m weighing up brick phones for her bus rides and I’ve retreated to a basic Kindle, which is light and thin and green, and which I adore. Of course I love mindless scrolling and the glare of the internet, but only, crucially, in its place.

Together foreverThe genius Dr Orna Guralnik, light of my life, saver of marriages, wearer of complicated T-shirts, is back on iPlayer with her most recent series of the compulsively watchable Couples Therapy. The best way to watch is with a partner on an evening you like each other, though I’m guilty of pausing regularly and asking, ‘Wait, is that how YOU feel?’ Very productive, and far cheaper than Relate.

Children first Heads up for parents: 12 July is Hetty Feather day at London’s Foundling Museum, where Jacqueline Wilson will be signing books from her beloved series.