February is a boorish lover— it puts thick clammy arms round you, slobbers between your shoulderblades and fills your nose with warm wet velvet. Heat smells like water, leeches plump up and dance their three-cornered numbers on your foot— better to see them first than find the bloodied sock and reebok, and the hole where one hooked itself into your life-support system. February has no pleasures. Air becomes rain, rain melts into the air, like Callas’ voice becoming music. The wrong sort of mushroom emerges, and the dog eats it. You are a watch one minute from winding down. You…