Flame on!

The weather has dropped about 10 degrees in the last fortnight and I think I’m the only person living in Melbourne to see this as a positive thing. After six years in Dunedin, the six before that in a drafty boarding house and my formative years at a primary school that had shorts as part of the uniform 365, I miss cold weather. There is a stage when it gets too cold and I start to hate it again (like the time while walking around Venice in January when I thought my nipples were going to freeze off) but as long as icicles don’t start to form on the end of my nose I’m OK.

I figure I can always put more clothes on or cover myself in another blanket when the mercury starts to decent but there is a limit to what you can do as the heat rises. I don’t have air conditioning at home so when the temperature gets into the late 30s I start to expire. Survival occurs largely by taking a lot of showers and putting my underwear in the freezer before putting them on. My ideal situation would involve emergency showers (like you see in laboratories in case of a chemical spill) situated all over the house so I could step under for a cold blast anytime I start to break a sweat, supplemented by a valet to bring me a continuous stream of chilled pants so I can swap my undergarments for a fresh pair as they begin to lose their cooling properties.

A more likely solution is that I just don’t live in tropical Australia for too many more summers. Robyn is ready to start studying for her Clinical Psychology degree so I think I’m going to order a prospectus for University of the Faroe Isles. I hear they have an excellent post-graduate program there.