Blood’s a-boiling

took my fan with me in the car yesterday; the a/c in the new, improved civic just doesn’t cut the wasabi. i guess you could say i got those mean ol’ swindon blues, even though cyanic references usually apply to the lower end of the temperature spectrum – at least on the vintage, late 20th century mixer tap in my bathroom. this fan, i should point out (in case you hadn’t already put 237 and 273 together), is of the folding rather than electrically rotating variety.

i have to say, though, that neither this despondency, nor the rivulets of perspiration whence said despondency derives, has any effect on the messianic zeal with which my right foot attacks the go.fast.pedal – esp in second gear and third. of course, this means that i need to have both hands on the helm; negating thus, for most of my journey, the potentially cooling effects of lady windermere’s favourite implement.

fifty degree heat, dodgy a/c’s and hooligan right foots do not mix well.

i have taken – as a consequence of this half-century of celsius scales – to wearing suits of the finest (well, sort of) linen instead of the usual cheap-to-middling woolen jobs. they are light in weight, cooler of course, and wrinkle so very very evocatively. they put me in mind of certain monochrome hollywood classics of the forties and fifties, the ones set in exotic tropical locales like tangiers, alexandria, and lubbock, texas – ceiling fans raspingly rotating at six-and-a-half revolutions per minute, the male protagonists, draped in suitably wrinkled linen suits, dabbing the backs of their necks with cotton hankies.

i imagine myself as part of not the group of “fortunate ones who through money, or influence, or luck, might obtain exit visas and scurry to lisbon; and from lisbon, to the new world” – but “the others… who wait... and wait... and wait...” and sweat.

my advice to those of you destined to spend the summer here in the premised [sic] land is to adopt linen as your fabric of choice. and to accept that perspiration (if you’re a woman) or good old fashioned manly sweat is not only inevitable, but therapeutic too (have you not heard of turkish baths?).

or you could spend your days cocooned in the cool comfort of your climate-controlled abode, not stepping out before the sun has well and truly set, and fifty degrees cools down to a less oppressive 38½. i’d suggest stocking up on a few good books though (marathon sessions of tv-remote flicking can seriously damage your health). yann martell’s beatrice and virgil, aravind adiga’s the white tiger, and m. hanif’s a case of exploding mangoes (all of which i have read in the past couple of weeks) are cracking good reads.

i have just finished kundera’s the joke, and dived right into james ellroy’s american tabloid once again (to be followed by the cold six thousand) in order to refresh my timeworn memory in preparation of attacking blood’s a rover, the much awaited final instalment of ellroy's brilliant “underworld usa” trilogy.

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p.s. linen is meant to crinkle. use your window of ironing opportunity to press discipline upon more fastidious fabrics.

p.p.s. swindon is the site of honda’s uk manufacturing facilities, not the birthplace of the poet algernon charles.