The sticky end of summer

Eugh.  This is the hot and / or damp end of summer.  Hot and damp generally means you’re producing the moisture yourself, so if you’re wearing a shirt to get to work, you better take another one to work in.  Hot or damp means it can be a baking harsh day in direct-sunlight then drop five or ten degrees when the rain arrives, then turn steamy and humid once the sun comes back.  All in the space of an hour.  Or just raining and hot, that happens, a warm shower on the way home.

There’s a myth over here that only pommies whinge, and whilst it’s true that complaining is less acceptable in Australia, that doesn’t seem so true when it comes to the weather.  Kurt, my gorgeous-but-vain friend, was moaning about the humidity the other day and I got a chance to do one of my favourite things.  We were in a crowded café (everyone piling in for the air-conditioning) so at an opportune moment I got to say, in a loud english accent ‘Oh stop whingeing’.  Suddenly people were backing away from Kurt as if I’d just fingered him as having the plague.  To be accused of whingeing is bad enough, but to be accused of it by an Englishman…..the shame.  Kurt, being Kurt, just gave me a withering look and carried on with his story of arriving on a blind-date with his shirt stuck visibly to his torso.  I couldn’t resist pointing out that most women would love a blind-date which involved a Kurt turning up with his shirt stuck damp to his body but he told me I was being gay and making him uncomfortable.  Then he carried on whingeing.  

OK, I’m supposed to be talking about February in Sydney here but I’m going to allow myself a slight diversion.  No one in Australia gets to read these and names have been changed to protect the innocent so I’ll tell you a little about Kurt instead.   He’s goooorgeous.  He knows it unfortunately so is a little bit arrogant about it, but once you get used to that he’s a nice bloke and we’re becoming quite good friends.  He was at school with a very good mate of mine (Zen) and the three of us – check it out dude – are learning to surf.  Guess who’s worst at it.  Anyway, Kurt is fascinating because he has four children from three different gold-diggers.  My analysis not his, but I think he’s being a little naïve.  You see Kurt is what in socio-econometrics is referred to as Seriously Fucking Loaded.  Or rather, his parents are.  He’s the friend I wrote about in an earlier post who took us out on the harbour in his boat (parent’s boat) which cost more than our house.  I think it’s called a cruiser, a giant speedboat with a deck and a cocktail fridge.  Blondes seem automatically programmed to strip down to bikinis and sunbathe on its deck.  On the day Oliver and I were on it, we parked at one point below Kurt’s parents’ house so they could come out on their balcony and wave.   Karen (cynical, hippy friend) was one of the blondes that day and she yelled up at the top of her voice ‘Adopt me, please! I can cook!’.

Anyway, back to February.  It’s humid and either raining or hot.  It’s back-to-school time but not in the British way where different schools start on different days and there are gradually less children in the way.  Monday 1^st February was the first day back at school for every child in Australia as far as I could tell.  On Tuesday 2^nd there were suddenly twice as many people in the office as I have seen for weeks (January closes Sydney in the same way August closes Paris).  I would have thought they’d be back on Monday but Monday was quieter than Christmas, half the office being of the age where they have a child starting school for the very first time.  This requires a day-off apparently (eight-hour farewells in the playground?),  followed by photograph-swaps on Tuesday.  I must have looked at pictures of seven different children I didn’t know, crying in a uniform that didn't fit them.  It was like a bad paedo-convention.

So we have one more month of summer to run, 1^st March being very officially autumn, but I’ll admit it’s useful having a humid, sticky end to the season.  It means you regret its ending less and get to think wistfully of the cooler weather before the reality of it arrives.  I’m normally planning my winter skiing about now, but the house up at Copa means I probably can’t afford it this year.  Instead, I’ll be working in the garden, moaning about the cold, longing for the languid, lazy days of summer.