What the death card taught me about summer

With the temperatures set to soar again, I've been wondering how to manage myself. Move more slowly. Drink truckloads of water. Sleep with a single sheet, because no sheet feels warmer for some reason.

I was wondering whether animals ever hibernate in the summer. The heat makes me want to hide in a dark room and sleep. Do you find this too?

So I googled 'summer hibernation'. And yes, there is a word for it. Aestivation. Hiber means winter, aeste means summer. Aestivating animals seek out cool underground cocoons to cope with drought and heat.

A cool subterranean cave sounds alluring. But as with every July in family life, there are unavoidable demands. College open days with my daughter. A summer holiday to book for the family. Birthdays, school concerts, BBQs, work, and all the other end of term shenanigans. I feel like I just have to get on with it.

July always feels full. In fact, when I think about it, around the winter and summer solstice I feel a tug between needing rest and having too much to do.

The Sicilians know how to live with the sun. In my younger days I spent long summers there with locals. Some businesses closed through August. Daytime was spent indoors. The apartments were made for heat with marble floors and shutters at the windows. Indoors was the most restful place to be.

Life began at sunset there over August. The locals met in cafes late evening over a ristretto and cannolo. Then the passeggiata would start, people walking through the town in the cooler evening air.

With all this in my mind I got curious about what the cards have to say. What would it look like to aestivate over July and August? The card I received was surprising. I had imagined the four of swords, or the nine of pentacles. Perhaps the empress. But instead I pulled the death card.

The death card does make sense to me though. In an obvious way, here I am faced with the very image of a dark, cool underground cocoon. Time away from the light.

The figure we see also has a scythe. She has cut back on her activities and has come to a standstill. A culling of over activity has taken place.

However, the death card feels more of a collective shift. If we are to survive the summers to come, there must be a letting go of the old ways in which we have lived. Maybe there needs to be a cultural move away from our routine.

We still have a nine to five life on the whole in the UK. They say only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, and to some extent we are still so delighted when the sun appears that we tend to go a little nuts.

Instead, with the way the weather is becoming more extreme, we may need to die to our old ways and take some hints from our Mediterranean friends. Aestivation looks like a complete cultural shift. A death.

How are you responding to the heat?

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Claire