Endless Summer

Yet another day with temperatures in the mid thirties, blue sky and gentle breeze. A tad on the hot side for someone with 40% extra blood in her veins, but hey, I am not complaining. Especially after talking with friends and family in the UK who are in the throes of the coldest spring for over 20 years. Snow, sleet and ice for them this late in March seems a little unfair. Recently I have been checking out a couple of webcams overlooking Buchanan St in Glasgow, and boy, does that make me feel that emigrating was the right decision!

Being predominantly of southern English extraction, even living approximately half my life in Scotland did nothing to harden me against the cold and damp, and I have always felt the cold to more of an extent than other people. Probably my inadequate circulation. Actually the coldest winters I ever spent were in Norfolk, Kent (in an unheated student house a stone's throw from the North Sea), and in southern France, so the Scotland theory has some major exceptions. But I think it is the darkness in Scotland that is the hardest to bear. Wonderfully light on summer evenings, but those Decembers/Januaries when the streetlights stay on all day and you can feel your bones going soft are just too, too hard.

Perth apparently has the best city climate in the Southern Hemisphere. Summer here this year was late, but it's certainly here now. And soon we have "Autumn", when a small proportion of trees drop their leaves and temperatures dip to the low twenties. I never get bored of the sunshine. I never wish for a rainy day. Couldn't think of anywhere better to live at this point in my life, for sure.