Another post about the weather

I wrote this last Friday:

My worms are dead. When I asked my neighbour if his lovely weeping alder is deciduous, he answered: it is now. I checked the newspaper online for a current temperature reading only to see that my friend’s bookshop is on fire (a suspected exploding air conditioner.) It’s the third day over 43C; today it reached 44.2C (111.6F)

***

I couldn’t continue. Too hot; my laptop burning into my sticky thighs, my brain unable to form basic, expositional sentences. I wanted to memorialise sprinklers (their typewriter-like staccato, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwackthwackthwackthwackthwack) but couldn’t. Wanted to point you to this lovely quote (“Love the winter. Do not betray it. Be loyal.”) but how could I? I was dying; the initial frisson of excitement long over. It felt apocalyptic. 

Then, as I left work today, it was muggy and overcast, like a day at the coast just before a storm hits. Big leaves were flying off the trees, swirling and eddying all along Swanston Street. So now it’s autumn? Say it isn’t so.

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