Usually the air is alive with birdsong at 5:30 but all I can hear are the harsh, ragged caws of assertive magpies and crows, and fat pigeons’ coos. Young swifts dropped dead in the heat leaving their nests. A professor of climate hazards says “When our children are our age, they will yearn for a summer as ‘cool’ as 2022.” The washing up gloves have melted into the sink.