Hot Topic

I don't need to tell you it's hot. You're most likely aware of it from the small detail of your face melting off your skull. Unless you are not in Australia. We are, of course, in our summer months presently.

The heat is often a hot topic (pun intended) for these bogans.  Micky Blue Eyes loves summer. In fact, if he had his way we would probably be heading up to Darwin next Tuesday instead of Queensland. He frequently makes remarks like:

"Wouldn't it be great to be somewhere up in the top end now, in one of the water holes, having a dip!"

I usually look at him as if he is deranged. Clearly he is. He grew up in a family who were not familiar with air conditioning. In fact my out-laws still do not have air conditioning in their home. Therefore, another frequent comment I hear, is "We never had air conditioning, when I was a kid!"

My parents, on the other hand, live in a perpetual state of 'heat horror'. In fact they had to go away to the country for the weekend for my Uncle's 80th birthday celebration. My mother was not impressed at the weather predictions. It was as if my Uncle had an unmitigated gall to have been born in summer, so I'm surprised I was born in January.

We were lucky enough to have had air conditioning from the time I was about five or six. I was constantly reminded how of how lucky I was, by my heat fearing parents.Whenever anybody we knew was foolhardy enough to go away for a family vacation, during the summer holidays, they were immediately dismissed as being completely and totally INSANE. We rarely had summer holidays. As I have always been an indoorsy, bookish person, this never bothered me greatly.

However, since meeting Micky Blue Eyes all that has changed. Now, we will usually go away somewhere during the summer holidays. And that somewhere will always be HOT.  There is not really any escaping it in Summer time, in Australia.  I don't mind going away. In fact, I usually end up enjoying it.

My only aversion to the heat, revolves around the reality of being a 'ranga'. This, of course, means that I have the pallid, almost translucent, freckled skin that goes with it.  Five minutes in the sun and I am decidedly pinkish. Ten minutes equals serious sunburn. After fifteen minutes, I may as well say hellooo Melanoma.   All the 30 plus sunscreen will not prevent me from being burnt somewhat.

Therefore, I really prefer to remain indoors as much as possible. Meanwhile, Micky Blue Eyes will want to hit the beach and go for as many walks as possible. He never likes to actually admit that it's hot. Instead he'll attempt to think of as many inventive excuses as to why he feels hot.

"Maybe it's because I'm not playing soccer/doing enough exercise and sweating it out so that's why I'm sweating now." That is a familiar one.

Or, it's the chair he's sitting on is leather so that is making him sweat not the fact that it's 40 degrees in the shade.  Similar to how most males won't ever ask for directions when lost, Micky Blue Eyes will never admit that is, indeed hot, and the heat is effecting him.

He laments the fact that air conditioning is contributing to global warming and that people have become far too dependent on it. Which I have. Thanks Mum and Dad.

Just to be thoroughly inconsistent though, as much as I abhor the heat, I definitely do not think the cold is any better. No matter how many times people tell me that it is 'easy' to warm up, just chuck on some extra clothes, I have personally never found that theory to be true. My feet remain blocks of ice all through winter despite three pairs of socks and Ugg Boots.  I've even been known to have cold feet as late in the year as November. Now that is just plain wrong.  I must have been a frog in past life or some other cold blooded animal.

So here I will be complaining about the weather for at least half of the year. I whinge when it's hot. I whinge when it's cold.  Right, excuse me while I go back to melting.

How do you survive the heat? Do you love the heat? Prefer the cold? Don't care? Let's discuss the weather! It's fascinating. Isn't it? Oh okay, I'll shut up about it.