A 38-degree day. Not what you need when you've got a three-month-old boy who has yet to tell night from day, let alone spring from summer. Who has already spent the previous night in the Children's Hospital emergency ward, floppy and dehydrated.
His mum had been there all night, too, so she was exhausted. After work, it was my job to keep the baby cool. But the weather god was with me — by 6.00pm the vicious temperature had dropped to a humane 23 degrees. A perfect night to pop him in the pusher and enjoy a cool breeze.
Focused on his needs as we walked, it took me a while to notice that very few others in the suburb thought a cooling stroll was the answer after a day sweating at even the thought of physical activity. Except for my many Greek neighbours. They were out in numbers. I waved as they strolled the footpaths together under the loquat trees, brushing flies away with tree branches, or sat in groups, talking (loudly) on their verandas.
But the only sounds as I passed many other houses were air conditioners, chattering on side walls or rooftops. Below them sat cool and often ornately furnished verandas, silent and unoccupied. If it had been just a couple of houses, I'd have thought, 'Okay, so they don't know the cool change has come.' But I walked my son past rows and rows of houses, and so many of them had air conditioners talking as loud as my Greek neighbours.
We're a nation that can't tell a cool change from climate change, I thought. And felt immediately hypocritical. How often had I driven around in an air-conditioned car, hot not because of the outside temperature, but because it had sat for hours under a mild sun? What's more, I own a portable air conditioner and bring it out of the shed to cool a room when the mercury gets as hot as Mercury. And I'd bring it in more often — if it wasn't for my wife.
She's part Italian, not Greek, but reminds me to let the cool change do its work, rather than the air conditioner. As soon as it cools down outside, she opens the windows and doors and wafts the day's heat on its way. And, even if it's only marginally cooler outside than in, she packs me and the rest