From the editor

Three things are happening at once this week, and they rhyme.

The hottest stretch of the year so far, with a red warning still to come. A World Cup match tonight that a few million of us will watch together for no productive reason at all. And, fifteen years on, a new Hard-Fi record — the band that once set the British working week to music, back in a Britain where that week is quietly coming apart. Set them side by side and the same idea runs through all three: the value of the hours we do not spend working, and how unsettled those hours have become.

You cannot do much about the heat, or the leadership, or the football. But the edition points at a few things that are actually in your hands tonight.

One: treat the night as something to protect, not just survive. If your home holds heat — most British homes do — the practical moves are dull and they work. Close the curtains on the sunny side during the day; open the windows once the air outside is cooler than the air in. And notice who on your street has a harder time of it than you.

Two: if there is an older neighbour, or someone living alone nearby, this is the week a knock on the door matters more than usual. A cold meal carried round; a jug of water left in a fridge. The heat-health alerts are, underneath, a loneliness warning. You can answer it directly.

Three: let one thing tonight have your whole attention. The match, if that is you — nine o'clock, BBC One, together with everyone else. Or, if it is not, the record you never sit down with properly: put on Hard-Fi's old Stars of CCTV, then the new one, and listen for what fifteen years has done to the life it describes. Either way — one thing, all the way in, the way we so rarely allow ourselves.

None of this is a to-do list. It is an invitation to spend an unusually charged evening on purpose rather than by accident — which is, when you strip everything else away, the question this paper exists to ask: what do we do with the time that is not work? This week hands you a loud, hot, slightly unmoored version of that question. Answer it however you like. Just answer it on purpose.

The Quernal provides general information and comment, not financial, legal or career advice; decisions should be made on your own circumstances, with regulated advice where it matters.