The Mista gets home from a week of being away and tells me they’re saying that the weather this weekend is going to be shit.
He wasn’t even here? How does he know?
Of course, the Mista gets all sorts of information from reading periodicals filled with facts and figures and stories that directly impact us today, now! I could maybe find the weather forecast from somewhere on my blogroll, but the weather’s going to come whether I know about it or not.
And maybe it won’t really be so bad, just because ‘they’ say so.
Petunia is over. She agrees with the ‘them’ to whom the Mista refers.
“A bank holiday in England. Of course the weather’s going to be bad. When is there ever nice weather for a bank holiday?”
Petunia was away for the last bank holiday, the bank holiday when we did have write-home-about-it weather. The Mista reminds her of this.
“Actually it was great weather for my birthday weekend.” The Mista is all fact and reality and how things are.
Petunia has a slight streak of pessimism. Is it an example of the European stereotype? Old World Europe prepared for disappointment, that history has taught, is inevitable? Or, a stereotype of Eastern Europe and remnants of invasion and communism and hardships like having to eat newspaper soup and you were lucky if you had salt and pepper to season it up? Or is it just Petunia commentating on crap English weather?
Meanwhile, I hold out hope that ‘they’ will be wrong.
Saturday morning comes. The sun is shining. The birds are chirping. I am smug.
I’m right! They’re wrong!
As smug as I can be through my sneezes and runny nose and itchy eyes. I’ve taken a tablet.
When will this thing kick in?
So certain am I in the good weather of the day, I book a court for 4pm. Petunia, the Mista and I will hit some balls. My allergies will not get in the way.
As the day passes, my certainty wanes. The sky can’t seem to make up it’s mind: to smile or frown. The wind creates little ad hoc hurricanes in our back garden. While my sneezing has abated, my nose continues to run; my eyes continue to itch.
The Mista makes note of the wind. “The wind’s going to make it not so much fun to play.”
I pretend I don’t here him.
Petunia arrives. She has ridden her bicycle. Her face is scrunched up. She looks like she has tasted something bad. “The wind is crazy and there is tons of shit in the air.”
Nothing will ruin our tennis. We’re going to have fun god damn it.
On the court, we are lethargic. It’s as if the pollen is so thick, the wind so strong, that we are unable to move through it, to move against it. All that shit in the air gets in our lungs. I start to wheeze. Petunia asks me if I’m alright. I nod because I cannot get the breathe to mutter, “yes”. The three of us agree that it feels as if we have tiny shards of glass in our eyes.
The sun is shining, though. The weather’s not total crap. Until this morning.
So maybe “they” are right.
I sit in my garden chair listening to The News drone on unintelligibly from a neighbour’s open window. I haven’t got much interest so I do not try to exercise my Jamie Summers-style super sense of hearing. A baby in my kitchen alternates between squeals of laughter, silence, and desperate wails. Silence. Wail. Silence.
“Papa!”
Silence. Laughter. Silence.
I have an admission to make: I do not have a super sense of hearing.
What is true: my current interest level in The News and my inability to make head or tails from the jumbled noise coming from my neighbour’s open window are aligned this morning. I don’t care what the inaudible gray noise, which I know to be a television man’s voice, has to say. I’ll read the paper or watch my own television later today, if my interest level shifts gears. Right now, the droning is just a part of early morning summer-ish ambience. As is the baby in the kitchen.
I sit in my garden chair and think about what summer brings to London.
Have we really had 5 straight days of sunshine and warmth?
I can’t be bothered to dissect the past week to verify the sunny day count. I don’t need to justify the feeling that summer is here. London summer advent has signs. They are here.
First of all the open windows. My windows, the neighbours’ windows. Not to mention the chair in my garden, and the fact that I’m sitting in it. The baby in the kitchen is also a sign. The baby in the kitchen is not my baby. You should know better by now. I do not have, nor have I ever, had a baby. The baby in the kitchen is a visitor. Visitors abound in London Summer.
I think about the other signs I’ve witnessed over the course of the past week.
The abundance of cleavage. Skin. Exposed. Everywhere.
Itchy red eyes and tissues in all of my pockets and increased trips to Boots or Superdrug or the local chemist for packets of Claratin or Zirtek or the one that starts with a P but I never remember the name.
The increased need for a lead when Butters and I go to the park anytime that’s not very early or very late because there are scads of picnic-ers or sunbathers or picnic-ers-slash-sunbathers (and even readers!) littering the normal way. These people – especially the picnic-ers – excite Butters to a point of socially unacceptable friendliness.
Summeresque sunshine also brings out the freaks. The man in a dress shirt and shoes wears shorts to practice Tai Chi in the middle of the pavement.
Summer is here. Finally.
Everyone’s saying the same thing: “It’s the sixth of April … snow???!!!! What the fuck?”
Or some variation thereof.
“And just yesterday ….”
Who am I to be any different?
Just yesterday I woke up with only one clear nostril (the left one), which, because I was sleeping on my left side, was pressed closed against my pillow. The right nostril was blocked by allergy related mucus, and I had no other alternative than to breathe out of my mouth whilst I slept. When I awoke, my mouth was uncomfortably dry, my right nostril was uncomfortabley crusty, and I thought, “Fuck, I’m not supposed to get hayfever until June!” A roll of loo paper sat on the nightstand next to me, apparently secured during a somnabulant trip to the toilet in search of relief. The Mista insisted that I had been talking nonsense upon my return with the toilet paper.
Every year like clockwork, June arrives, and I become an achoo-ing, snot-nosed, bloated-faced, itchy-roof-of-the-mouth victim of floral mating.
It is not June; it’s not even May; it’s barely April, and yet the microsopic flying things are already here and bombarding me with whatever it is that makes me so miserable.
Every year since I learned that there is a jab they can give you, I have meant to go and seek out that jab. But June arrives and passes, and with it my hayfever; so no need. This year might be the year I get my act together and get that jab, because this year with its unreasonable, unseasonable temperatures threatens a longer, sustained period of allergy hell.
This morning I woke up, again on my left side but with a clearer nose. The Mista laid on his right side and faced me. He opened his eyes first while I struggled to rid myself of the vestiges of an unpleasant dream: Butters drowning, her wet limp body too heavy for me to carry.
“It’s snowing.”
“What?!!” I forget all about the dead dog and turn to look up and out the window. Sure enough, white feathery flakes promised me the slightest respite from premature allergy season.
Everyone’s talking about it: the world’s going crazy.
