Some weird symbols on my weather app this week.
What are the five blue dots on the cloud for Wednesday?
I’m sure I have seen them before – maybe like six months ago – but they just aren’t familiar to me.
Answers on a postcard, please.
Could it be another event – I’m playing football that evening – ruined by precipitation?
Households in the UK are already settling into a slightly earlier than usual Heating Debate, as in: should they put the central heating on yet?
Earlier than usual because of a bit of a cold snap over there, but whenever it happens, it prompts arguments:
No surprise that Belfast households argue more than any other. They could fight each other over stuff they agree on.
And they do.
But of course, down this end of the world, we’re heading the other way: into hotter times, and the joys of summer.
Except not yet.
So there was absolutely no debate at all when we got home this evening, that the fire was being lit.
Bloody freezing*!
* it’s 11°C
It’s been a good start to the day. It does seem that we’re almost done with spring (aside from the pummeling SouthEaster), and summer has moved in already. Thus, I’m sitting outside listening to the radio, catching up on a few emails, paying a few bills and writing a blog post. The garden is full of flowers, and the lawn needs a water. The beagle, having been bathed this morning – much to its displeasure – is on patrol, snorfing around and chasing butterflies.
It’s an idyllic picture. So let’s ruin everything with a handbrake turn.
Looking back at that link above, I’m reminded that this time last year, we were approaching 600 days of Covid lockdown. Believe it or not, there’s still quite a bit of Covid about, although no-one is testing anymore, because of the time and the effort and the money involved – and why spend all that stuff when no-one seems to care? – so we can’t be sure exactly how much.
And so much for this being “jUsT lIkE tHe CoMmOn CoLd”, with this huge overhang of cardiovascular deaths and Long Covid (which is also vastly underreported).
This is just the easily measured tip of the iceberg…
As I mentioned here, I think that thankfully, I’m finally over my issues [touches wood]. But I recently heard from a acquaintance who is anything but. Shortness of breath, palpitations, tachycardia, cognitive issues, that fatigue, and many other issues: just a general loss in quality of life. Ugh. Horrible. In her case, it’s so bad that she’s been admitted to a local pulmonology ward, which is half full of chronic Long Covid cases.
I guess that they’re only based there because it stemmed from a respiratory disease: these are very clearly multi-disciplinary cases.
I realise that it’s hip and cool to poke fun at Covid; to suggest that it wasn’t [note the incorrect use of the past tense] that bad, to weirdly tell people that it was all a “new world order” plan to keep us all under control, (incredible to see how governments were so ready and willing to work together on this one issue when they clearly can’t agree on fuck all else, before or since), to downplay it completely because you didn’t get sick (yet).
If you’re the person making those sort of points, you’re clearly ignorant, uninformed and actually rather callous.
We’re nowhere near done with Covid yet. And yet you can’t get a booster jab in Cape Town for love, nor money. Not that the booster on offer will help much – we need the new bivalent jab over here as soon as possible.
For those who insist that Covid will become just another seasonal viral infection, well, I actually agree with you. I just have two questions: When will that happen, and what cost will it bring – in both acute and chronic caseloads?
Until we have the answers to those questions, we really shouldn’t be dropping our guard – as individuals or as a society – because there’s a good chance that we’re going to end up regretting it at some point.
Well, as we’ve said before on here, yes. But actually, no.
But if it’s not quite here yet, it’s certainly coming very soon. I can’t recall a year when I’ve noticed so many things in nature are just “ready to go”. The plants, the weather, the birds… they all seem to be priming themselves in preparation for the joyful explosion that is the end of winter.
And indeed, from my current position atop the deck at the cottage, while I have my warm top on because the wintery wind is rather chilly, it’s also serving a dual purpose in preventing my neck from getting burned by the springtime sunshine. Being from Northern climes and a mix of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic bloodstock, I have to take things a little carefully in the powerful African sun, especially when it hasn’t been around for a few months.
But the yellow-billed kites are back and the greater striped swallows are here, whizzing around me (not sure of their unladen velocity), the bulk carriers are rounding the southern tip of Africa at a safe 10 nautical miles, on their way from China to Nigeria, and Durban to Fortaleza (technically not necessarily a spring thing). There’s a Cape Weaver begging for some of my loadshedding lunch of some chips (crisps) and a Black Label. And across the way, two male Rock Kestrels are fighting for the attentions of a female of the species.
We’re nearly there.
But even as I type, the weather is turning for the worse. Nothing dramatic, but it’s noticeable that there is more white water on the ocean that when I came up here an hour ago (no, I haven’t been blogging the whole time), and the wind is definitely getting up. I have no worries for the evening braai, though. The cottage was designed to be protected against both the ubiquitous southeasters of summertime and the vicious northwesters of winter. So somewhere in between, as we find ourselves right now, should be no problem at all.
Apologies for any typos: the sun is actually ridiculous now and I can’t see a thing.
I think it might be summer already.
Another roasting day here in the Cape. Despite our best efforts, the beagle has melted into a pool of fur and ears on the kitchen floor. Even my usually cool office has been infiltrated by the ridiculous heat.
I would love to hit the pool and quaff an ice cold beer, but I have a 4pm meeting.
On a Friday.
In summer.
In Cape Town.
Who does that?
Baie frustrasie.
(Can’t really blame them, to be honest: it was a cancelled flight scenario. But that sort of factual info ruins the drama.)
On the plus side, our plans for this evening seem to have been shifted to next week, so I might take the opportunity to light the braai, because who doesn’t want to stand next to the searing heat of coals when there is searing heat everywhere else? If I put it out in the sun now, will I even need to light it?
And then, tomorrow? Well, despite the headline above, Windguru is telling me about all day drizzle. Which would be welcome right now, but also massively unexpected.
Either way, it surely can’t be as hot as today.
Right?