I’ve been home for a month now and you know the first thing I say when anyone asks me “how’s it going?” I say, “It’s hot” (usually with an expletive or two included).
I know we’ve all heard about Seasonal Affective Disorder but it’s always spoken about in relation to cold places. Well you know what? When it’s hot as balls on a daily basis I’m not a doctor but I’m pretty confident it’s affecting my mood too and I don’t think Heat-Induced SAD is getting enough attention.
To be fair, it’s not really making me depressed, its just making me wild with anger. I wake up angry, I spend my day angry and I go to bed angry (my parents are so lucky.)
I went to dinner last night and we walked outside at 9:30pm and it was 30 degrees and 85% humidity. That’s not an exaggeration, that’s just life here in the FNQ. Yes, it’s as fucked as it sounds.
It’s so hot here that if I want to have the occasional afternoon nap I basically have to lie on the floor (hot air rises, duh) because even with the air-con on full-time the sun is so fucked up that it’s still hot inside.
I honestly don’t know how people live their whole life here? Oh that’s right, they do; they’re just perpetually aggravated.
I’m sure my Dad was a really happy guy for the first 30 years of his life before he moved here. Now everything makes him angry. I thought it was just general ‘grumpy’ old man stuff but now I’m not so sure.
He’s been walking out of his air-conditioned house, his office, the restaurant he has his boozy Friday lunch at and the Golf Club Pro Shop/Bar (they’re literally the only places my Dad goes) everyday and it’s made him the most irritable 60 year old on the planet.
You know what though, I’d probably be furious that my daughter used the car for approximately 5kms and didn’t fill the tank all the way back up even though everyone knows that’s the way I like it and she has no respect or appreciation for other peoples property, if I had been living in this fucking hellhole for the past three decades.
So yeah, I’ve got a bit of a bone to pick with the people in cold places who are always complaining about it. Oh you’re having a ‘brutal’ winter? It’s dark there? It’s making you sad?
Throw on a jacket, get a floor lamp and shut the fuck up.
In the interest of a balanced take (basically a journalist), I spoke to a friend of mine who is living in London about this and this was her response: “ You’d think throwing on a jacket would suffice but then you wake up on your 12th day without having seen sunlight and you start thinking about the best corner on your walk to work to throw yourself in front of one of those red double-decker buses you used to think were so cool.”
This just furthers my point….Better a suicide than a mass murder. Which is where I’m currently at in my level of fury over life in general.
Hey Townsville, it’s April…get your fucking act together.
Probably Not a Thing 