Tempers fray in the heat

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Buondì.

If you’re in Australia you might be feeling a little down about the weather. This site tells me it’s 6C in Canberra, 15C in Sydney, 8C in Melbourne and 18C in Perth. The hottest place on the list is Darwin, in the north, where it’s 32C.

So either too cold and gloomy or too hot, which sounds rather like the climate in Bologna, Italy, where I live.

Being in the northern hemisphere, we’re in the too hot phase, and easily beating Darwin, which sounds like a paradise by comparison (source=Italian Wikipedia):

Darwin ha due diverse stagioni climatiche, quella “umida” e quella “secca”. La stagione umida va da novembre ad aprile ed è caratterizzata da un’elevata umidità, piogge monsoniche e temporali. Le temperature solitamente variano da un minimo di 25 °C a un massimo di 33 °C. La stagione secca, da maggio a ottobre, è caratterizzata da giornate calde, secche e assolate e notti fresche. Le temperature solitamente variano tra 21 e 32 °C e i livelli di umidità sono molto più bassi.

Cool nights? Low levels of humidity? Where do I sign??

Here in Bo as I write this, it’s eight-thirty a.m. and already 26C, according to my app.

By the time I jump in the car to go collect Bug from his petting zoo – in eight hours’ time – it’ll be ten degrees hotter, so 36C.

Though the automobile itself, having spent the day sitting in the sun, will likely be 43-44C, so hot enough to burn your bum.

I open all the windows, run the air-conditioning at full blast, and by the time I double-park in the centro storico, it’s usually only a degree or two hotter in our tatty Fiat Punto than it is outside. Though still much too hot.

In the evenings, parks, walks, any sort of outside at all, are intollerable. It’ll be 35C at 6pm, and still 28C at eleven, by which time I’ll be in bed with the air-conditioning on, trying to finish my library book (which will disappear from the app on my phone at some point tomorrow, leaving me with a hundred or so pages in Italian to read and a looming naval battle I want to know the outcome of.)

It being very, very hot – both day and night – obviously impacts personal comfort. But besides feeling damp and sticky all the time, the most noticeable effect is on people’s mood, and not just mine as my wife appears to believe.

Admittedly I rather lost it yesterday evening with Bug, who was being a total pain in what Americans call the butt, bouncing around the place destroying things and making it impossible to relax or get anything done. Preparing a meal without leaving anything sharp or spillable in reach requires a level of patience that I’m currently lacking.

Coming back from the petting zoo yesterday afternoon – with the auto air-con on max but the temperature still showing 37C – Stefi was being contrary.

You’re being contrary, I told her. Everything I say, you maintain the opposite is true.

No I’m not, she replied. It’s you! You’re being contrary.

Well of course it’s me, darling. You’re right, as usual, it’s me being contrary. (I was hoping to provoke her into denying it, just to prove my point.)

Talking of wives, today’s our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary!

I remember June 25th 2000 as being an unpleasantly hot day to put a suit and tie on, then hang around for ages minding a small child and a crowd of relatives I barely knew the names of.

Naturally, Stefi’s sure it was raining. She was wearing a cardigan over her white dress, she remembers.

The internet says we’re both wrong.

Così. If any club members are at our Italian school today, be sure to congratulate her on putting up with me for a quarter of a century. The school, by the way, has air-conditioning in each classroom. Enjoy.

We’re planning to break our sweaty car ride home this afternoon and stop at a local park, where there’s a lake and a shady bar.

Bug can run around, barking at the ducks and geese and worrying old ladies, while we celebrate, and cool down, with something very alcoholic.

Alla prossima settimana.

P.S.

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