119: I know I should forgive my enemies… but what if I don’t want to?

**Ash Sarkar** (0:00)
So you might feel that you've had more than enough of us for one summer, but just in case, you are a thirsty, thirsty little piggy with your snout at the content trough, why not join us at Crossed Wires Festival in Sheffield on July the 4th? You can get tickets at crossedwires.live, and there are gonna be other live podcasters there as well. So just in case you want to add to your yapping diet, as well as if I speak, they'll be Blind Boy, they'll be Bold Politics with Zach Polanski, and many more to boot. So go to crossedwires.live and grab your tickets there.
This is If I Speak, fresh from melting in our respective sweltering homes. We're in the week before it gets up to 30 again, and it feels amazing.

**Moya Lothian-McLean** (1:12)
How did you cope with the heat wave? What did you do?

**Ash Sarkar** (1:15)
So much watermelon. So this is real, like, I grew up living amongst Cypriots, is that you just get a watermelon, you dice it, you keep it in a big bowl in the fridge. Every time you feel hot, you get more watermelon. Lunch is a watermelon, feta and mint salad.
Watermelon was really very key. What about you?

**Moya Lothian-McLean** (1:37)
We discovered that if you open all the windows, it makes a wind tunnel.

**Ash Sarkar** (1:42)
Yes, cross breeze.

**Moya Lothian-McLean** (1:43)
Yeah, so we made a wind tunnel, but because the wind tunnel tends to slam doors, we had to prop every door open. So we made a wind tunnel. We also went to the parks for shade. So we went and the parks were completely empty. People weren't sunbathing because it was too hot to sunbathe.
So we did some shading. And I actually just got back from Marseille on the Thursday. So I came back and I came off the plane. It was the exact same temperature I just left, but with no sea.

**Ash Sarkar** (2:14)
Yeah.

**Moya Lothian-McLean** (2:15)
And I thought, oh, this is hell.

**Ash Sarkar** (2:18)
Someone said that London heat is like the air that comes out the back of a bus.

**Moya Lothian-McLean** (2:23)
Or, it is, it stinks. We were walking down Rye Lane and my boyfriend just kept pointing out all the different smells, like some sort of strange dog.

**Ash Sarkar** (2:32)
Like a dog that could talk. Like that's if a dog could talk.

**Moya Lothian-McLean** (2:35)
Yeah, he was like, fish, piss, shit. And I said, good dog, we don't need to do that.

**Ash Sarkar** (2:45)
Good dog, good dog.

**Moya Lothian-McLean** (2:46)
We don't need to do that, we can all smell it. We can all know what the smells are.

**Ash Sarkar** (2:50)
But I just wanted you to be aware.

**Moya Lothian-McLean** (2:52)
I've got some questions for you though.

**Ash Sarkar** (2:53)
And I want to answer them.

**Moya Lothian-McLean** (2:56)
They were, this is the best that my sluggish heat brain can do. Actually, I was wondering this yesterday because we were, we cycled everywhere.
Because that also helped us cool down.

**Ash Sarkar** (3:07)
Create your own breeze.

**Moya Lothian-McLean** (3:08)
Exactly. And I remembered Ash, that during the pandemic, your husband did something very loving with you, which was?

**Ash Sarkar** (3:15)
Anal. No.

**Moya Lothian-McLean** (3:17)
Sorry, I'm joking. That is also loving.
It takes a lot of trust.

**Ash Sarkar** (3:21)
It's also not true. It's also not true.

**Moya Lothian-McLean** (3:23)
Well, we all said it now, haven't we? And he taught you how to ride a bike.

**Ash Sarkar** (3:28)
He did.

**Moya Lothian-McLean** (3:29)
And I was wondering, do you still ride that bike?

**Ash Sarkar** (3:32)
I do, but it's a different bike.
So the first bike I got was a fixed gear lime green with orange tires and an orange saddle, which I loved. But then the far right circulated pictures of me on the bike were like, run a rover if you see it. And because it was so distinctive, I was like, oh, there is actually kind of like a non zero chance of that happening. So I got a less distinctive bike, but that doesn't mean I love her any less because she comes with gears.

**Moya Lothian-McLean** (4:11)
I do like gears.

**Ash Sarkar** (4:13)
And also she's got quite a chunky tire, which I like. So not like full on like BMX tire, but it's not, I find like, you know the bikes with like the really narrow ones and like drop handlebars.

**Moya Lothian-McLean** (4:28)
Yeah, the road bikes.

**Ash Sarkar** (4:29)
I don't like that. I don't like that. It makes me feel very vulnerable and wiggly.