Grindstone cowboy

I was expecting some kind of explosion when I got back to work, or at least opening the office door to find myself washed away by a comical tide of paper. Things were suspiciously quiet though - Monday passed without so much as a rumble and then I went on a brief business trip to Tokyo and came back similarly unaccosted. I can hear the beast lurking in the shadows though, paper skin all a-crinkle. He watches me through hole-punched eyes and gnashes his paperclip teeth, waiting for the moment I drop my guard and say wow, not long till holidays.

Back o' my neck gettin' burned and gritty

It officially feels like summer now, which seems extraordinarily late given that I've been on summer holidays, being repeatedly sunburned, for the better part of a month. Still, I consider these incidents minor hiccups in an otherwise gloriously uninterrupted chorus of air conditioning; my brief trips out of our wintery apartment have been mostly to collect money, baby seals and puppy dogs to tip into its gnashing steel maw. For that reason I guess the heat hasn't affected us as much as usual.

What's really clued us in is the spate of very summery things we've been doing over the past few days, the highlight of which was a fireworks display where you could actually see fireworks. Are you listening, Osaka?