Why I’ve got the hots for localism

In England, we used to moan about rainy gray summers. Now it feels like we are in the meteorological version of a monkey paw story. I’m writing from a horrifically well-insulated sweatbox, which I used to refer to as my cozy little home. The fan beside me registers 29 degrees, and it’s 33 outside. Be careful what you wish for. Every day is the same: clear blue, suffocatingly hot, uncannily still. No one can remember what rain feels like. The parks are brown, and gardens turning to dust. Stressed trees are suddenly dropping huge boughs. At night, you see foxes all over the place, thirstily hunting water. It used to be fun to indulge in pathetic fallacy, and project hyperbolic human sentiments onto harmless old British weather systems: brooding skies, raging storms, and so forth. But right n