It is seriously hot, stupidly hot for the second week of May, very, very unseasonably, humidly, hot. Like 37 degrees hot. Under low, oppressive skies of dirty grey clouds tinged with yellow. If this was Kansas I’d be ducking flying houses and making sure I didn’t wear red shoes.
May isn’t supposed to be like this, it’s supposed to be bright and beautiful not heavy and thundery.
We have red rains forecast but so far we’ve only had the occasional monster raindrop, making fat splats on the paving, sudden squalls of sullen hot wind and long silences as the birds stop singing and roost nervously, awaiting the storm. The old people mutter in groups and say it feels like Earthquake Weather. In other words it Bodes!
The hot wind blows out of the west, coming off the Sahara and the dry dust lands of Africa. It normally brings the red rain, rain heavy with dust that crossed a sea, rain that leaves behind a thin sludge that covers everything and takes forever to wash off. The much loathed Red Rains.
When I was young we learnt proper Geography and the names of the winds that torment men. From Provence where the Mistral blows and drives strong men mad, to Canada where the Chinook blasts your soul away and the name of the wind that blows the stars around (cue….Mariah!). The hot wind off the Sahara is called The Sirocco and it can reach hurricane force as it crosses the Mediterranean from Africa.
Born in the burnt lands of North Africa it is dry and dusty before it hits the sea, they call it The Chom there, the thirsty wind, but it drinks deep as it crosses The Great Green and by the time it gets here it is hot and humid and makes for uncomfortable nights and blast furnace days. It brings insomnia and ill luck, it is the wind that blew Job’s house down in the Old Testament and killed his children, it is the wind that the Romans called Austur, and it destroyed crops and sank ships. It is a wind to be feared.
To keep cool I spend the evening sitting with my feet in the pool. Every now and then a squall rushes into the courtyard, making the Camellia thrash and the Mandalina tree whip in the wind and my hair blows over my face and the ghosts of memory tug in the strange atmospherics.
‘Tis a dark and stormy night! A night far better spent reading something safe and conventional in an air conditioned bedroom, locking the weirds outside to walk the ancient streets whilst the Sirocco blows.
Evils passes me as I go inside, he slits his eyes against the hot air blast and heads out to terrorise 
everything small and fluffy. I watch him pose for a while on the studio roof, before he turns and stalks off into the bat flittering, ghost walking night, clear in the knowledge that he is the nastiest thing out there. Wish I was him.
posted 16-05-2010