personally, i blame the guvmint

Back in the early 60s, whenever I stayed at my grandmother’s place she would let me watch Zig and Zag on the TV.

The were only two episodes I recall in any detail. One was about how the two clowns helped repair the King? St Bridge after it developed a crack in it. Naturally it was hard work and they had a break half way through and each ate a Peter’s Ice Cream.

In another episode everyone was complaining about the weather, so Zig and Zag decided they could do a better job than the weather bureau. Some people rang up because they wanted to go skiing, and they set the meter to snow. The next call was from someone who wanted to go to the beach for a swim. I guess the moral to this story was that we can’t please everybody. [There have been some wholesome influences in my life.]

My own personal variation on the theme is that I refuse to be satisfied at all – and that’s not just about the weather.

The chill, not the temperature, makes a Melbourne winter a bit hard to take. On the other hand, it’s not much fun in summer having sweat pouring from every pore. Evaporative cooling has its limitations.

As a kid the heat never seemed to bother me because we were always in water. Well, the sunburn bothered me a bit, but not half so much as it will in ten or 15 years’ time when I’m having cancers burnt or cut off my skin all the time.

Once I hit my thirties I stopped going outside at all.

Keeping cool inside during a heatwave was a simple matter of using the bathtub as a plunge pool every 20 minutes or so. The other trick was to hang wet sheets over the screen door, which acted as a type of evaporative cooling system.

Okay, so it’s a bit much for me to wish I could have the temperature steady at 19 C +/- 2 all year round. But seriously, if we can’t please everybody, wouldn’t this be a good compromise?

Everywhere round the world, of course. It’s not just about me.