Weekend Watermelon Weather

Rose Street Market in Fitzroy is one of the many craft and artist markets in Melbourne. I went there this Saturday with friends Debbie and Zanetta. It was stinking hot, 33 C with a wind to sweeten the bargain but not however, a refreshing one. Rivers of sweat trickle down my back between t-shirt and pack as we walk. It's dry heat though, not debilitating humid blah, and I have the energy still to make the most of the day rather than wanting just to lie in bed with my head the freezer. Take a shower in this climate and realising as you reach around the shower door to grab the towel that you have left it in your room, is not a big deal. Your arm is dry already anyway and like some futuristic scanner-towel, your body soon follows. By the time you step out of the shower box to hunt down a flannel or t-shirt to wipe yourself with, you're dry anyway. Great! Saves on laundry!

“It should be cooling down by now,” Debbie complains. “It's March for godsake. About seven degrees less would be nice.”

Deb is not really a sun bunny. When she moved over to Melbourne last year, she was dreading the promised 40 temperature over New Years and so when the mercury topped at 47.5 I was wondering how she was coping. Actually I half expected her to decide that a Christmas Antarctic cruise was a fine sounding option but no, she was here, sweltering. When we caught up at the weekend, I asked her how she had weathered the heat and was surprised to see her shrug as if the painful memory, like childbirth, was one best forgotten so it could be repeated.

“I just stayed at home lying in the coolest part of the flat,” she said.

The image in my mind was of her lying spread-eagled on her back in the middle of the living room floor, dressed in swimsuit, ice packs surrounding her, moaning. That may have been the case but her shrug wasn't admitting it.

So we sweated our way around the market on the fine Saturday afternoon. It's watermelon weather and speaking of which, a nice, ice cold watermelon granita would not go amiss right about now but a cup of zuppa inglese gelato was next best thing. Mmmm.

Ha, finally I have found the cure for the affliction I had last sojourn of, feeling like an outcast Nigel No-friends at the weekends. On my last visit, I had been happy as Larry, amusing myself and fruitfully occupying my time during the week when I had writing and exploring to do. It was at the weekends however, when the rest of the world was out bonding with family and such, that I felt the lack of community being here solo. This time...wait for it...I have friends to hang out with. Wahoo! Debbie and Zanetta to go to the market, Lauren, Margaret and Sarah out finding Lauren a flat, it's wonderful. Melbourne is really a lovely city for getting to know people. I've been told that it is so friendly, in comparison to Sydney where people move away if the random stranger lady starts talking to them. I'm glad then that I am here and not in Sydney then. However it is poetic justice that I come to Melbourne to hang out with an Aucklander and a Hamilton girl. It really is a small world.