I have been on a journey to the forests of the far North, where the sun sets after midnight and the inhabitants mostly eat fish. I return to a hot Londres: hot weather and a hot political situation at the height of midsummer. The Vermin Party government is tottering but dragging itself onwards, a zombie government full of hate and fear. On the streets there is rage, not just from recent events but accumulated over years, now welling up and spilling across the city.

I have been enjoying being indoors on this sweltering day, taking stock and catching up with project work. My own research, I notice, has frequently been coming in second place to other work lately. That’s fine while there’s no hurry, but I’ll have to kick into a higher gear soon. I wonder if I should give up a few projects, perhaps even this journal.

A mosque in the north of Londres was attacked only a few days ago, by a man in a van. Today the authorities have described him as ‘self-radicalised’, as though he were an Island on which he has developed his Islamophobia in isolation. As though there are not newspapers that stir up hatred every day, hatreds that move out into everyday conversation. The only island self-radicalised is this Island, where politicians and news magnates have found it politically expedient to radicalise the population. But when someone takes it too far even for them: whoops, that’s totally unrelated. There is a sickness on the Island, plain to see but denied by many. Its roots go back many centuries.