Proust in the Garden

The glorious weather continues, with the temperatures today reaching 27 degrees here, hotter this afternoon than it is in London or Paris! As I often wonder when the weather is like this, why do we choose to live in a climate where this is the exception rather than the norm? James' answer to this is, "If the weather was great all the time we'd soon get tired of it." I am not convinced by this, I think I'd take at least a decade to get tired of it, at which point I could always move back to Scotland. This is all idle speculation of course; James and I are far too deep-rooted here to seriously consider moving to another country. And which one anyway? We wouldn't want a language barrier, it would have to have a safe culture and the climate would have to be just right, with some seasons to give it variety but a better amount of warm weather. Sydney in Australia was pretty pleasant during the Australian "winter", but I've heard that it's scorching in the summer. I will have to give this some more thought.
So I have spent all day in the garden, doing a bit of marking, reading Proust, chatting to James and the boys, and admiring how beautiful even the most everyday things look in the sunshine. James does not have my talent for idleness so he has been doing a bit of gardening and sanding down the garden furniture, but even he has had a nap on a mat on the grass this afternoon. I'm about to make dinner for Grandma, which we will eat outside.