Yearning for perpetual August

The last week of April was a bloody scorcher, and today marks the hottest start of May on record. Summer is rapidly approaching, and as someone who shuts off when it gets over 20C… Bugger¹.

I hate summer. Too hot. Too humid. It gets overbearingly muggy outside and going in doesn’t alleviate much either – housing here is designed to keep the heat in; chuck in cramped rooms and the fact I always end up with a south-facing window… Yeah, summer sucks. On top of that, my computer turns my room into a sauna.

You’d think I’d be a winter person instead, but no. At first it’s nice to wrap up in layers and sip a steaming mug of hot chocolate, but the honeymoon swiftly fades. I used to love winter, but recently I’ve found it to be bleak, depressing.

I think winter can be tolerable if you get a load of snow, even when it gets in the way of everything it’s still novel to have.

Well, what about spring? Two words: Hay Fever. For whatever reason I’ve been blessed with the superpower of detecting plant sperm. Spring would be lovely if not for my entire face melting off.

That leaves us with Autumn which… It’s alright, better than the other seasons, but it soon suffers the same issues winter has. Despite that, it’s the perfect weather for jackets, and the feeling of walking over crisp leaves in unparalleled – yet it doesn’t hold a candle to what comes right before it.

If you ask me, August is the best time of year. There’s a nice ambient warmth, far removed from the overbearing heat of June & July. The days are long, calm, and you can get away being out in shorts well through the night. You can just live, and be happy.

There’s a stability to August. It’s tranquil, gentle, the reward for putting up with the blistering months beforehand, and each year it’s over before I know it. Purple skies become black, the temperature drops, the good vibes fade away.

Sandwiched between unbearable heat and the long dark is a slice of August. And I’d do anything to have it be around forever.

I don’t like ending blog posts on a negative note, but I worry about the future.

As mentioned prior, today has been the hottest start of May on record. We had June temperatures at the end of April. Each year we seem to break a record on heat, and these records seem more frequent than ever.

I can barely cope with summer as-is; when it gets hot my brain struggles to work, I have to drag my body about, and whatever hopes I have of being efficient are dashed. Each year I get through summer I pray to myself that it won’t ever get hotter than this – but we all know it will.

I’d love to think that a single day at work at 35C is the worst I’ll ever have to go through. But no. Just knowing that summer is around the corner brings on the climate doom spiral thoughts, and for my sanity’s sake I have to flippantly handwave such thoughts away.

It’s a steady death march, and the only way to cope with it is to forget.