17 Dec 2010

Summer in the city

The smell of asado wafting through the windows is distracting my concentration. I'm hungry, wrestling with a deadline and the extreme heat is making it hard to focus. If it's true that the biting cold of a European winter puts people in a bad mood, then it's also certain that oppressive heat does nothing to bring out the best in people.

Today the city woke up nasty. Impatient taxi drivers and rushing-to-work commuters pound their horns with heightened intensity and the pre Christmas streets are teeming with pedestrians, less patient than usual; a rowdy rabble of jabbing elbows and sidewalk-hogging window shoppers.

Santa doesn't wear Bermuda shorts in this part of the world. With 35 degrees of heat you would think the red cloak, thick flannel trousers and beard would be reserved for colder climes. There is something slightly absurd about billboards of snow scenes and sledges, when the asphalt is melting beneath your feet.

The city is hot, dirty and draining today and no one has any desire to be part of it. I don't want to go out; I don't want to stay in. I just want someone to feed me grapes and fan me gently as I lie motionless upon a sofa. My father informs me that it's snowing again in their corner of the world; a record-breakingly cold winter before the worst has even begun... I guess you can never win.

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