Hot weather.

A cool change came through last night, and today is warm, with a strong cool sea breeze.   I feel like writing a blog, cleaning the house, going for a walk, cooking dinner.   And relaxing.   

But it has not been so, for the past five days or more.    The weather has just been too hot, and mostly over 35 degrees.   So one ends up by just gritting one's teeth and sitting it out.    This is Adelaide weather I do not enjoy, in fact I detest it, and always feel very miserable.   The searing heat, the northerly winds, the dryness.    I even start to pine for the grey skies of England.  

Adelaide is the dryest city, in the dryest state, in the dryest country, in the dryest continent in the world.   So if you have not visited Adelaide, than this will give you a general idea about the colour of everything at this time of year.   Brown, brown and more brown. And this is especially so after a summer without much rain, and with the grass in the paddocks drying off, ready to be cut for hay, or for harvesting for wheat etc.   The animals certainly have not much feed available, as there is a lot of bare and barren pastureland around as well.    The bare earth reflects the heat dreadfully.

Darren's back area of grass is looking very threadbare, except around the septic tank area.   It is lush there, of course.  

 JD stretched out in the shade.   No temper tantrums here, it is just too hot.   He even lost his appetite.   Poor JD, with all that fur.

 Of course we are lucky that we have a beautiful beach.   And we can drive our airconditioned cars right up to the waters edge, so no running across boiling hot sand in order to reach the coolness of the water.

The people in the photograph sat on their chairs in the water, and drank their beer in cool comfort.

They even deserted their beautifully set up shelter.  A birthday party on the beach, according to the banner.

 Scott sunning himself.  Where is your sunhat Scott?  At least you have a T shirt on.  

 On Sunday we visited Morag, Sean and Murphy at Largs Bay, not far from Port Adelaide, where we spent an hour and a half sitting in the warm shallow water.   So refreshing. We also saw an enormous sting ray swimming past, but did not try any Steve Irwin tricks.    Normally sting rays are very timid but I sat behind Morag and Billie Joe just to make sure.  

Yesterday, it was a pupil free day at Jay and Jespa's school, so we took them to the ice skating rink.   A very cold place, perfect when it is so hot outside.  And we loved it.    Why is there no one else there?  Scott looks very lonely on the skating rink.  

 Ice skating in shorts.   Jespa was not going to take any chances so put his tracksuit bottoms on, no skinned knees there.   Ice skating when it is 35 degree outside is so incongruous!

 Walter sat in a comfortable lounge, in icy cold conditions.   There were many such spongy lounges and chairs there, obviously this skating rink looks after the comfort of their patrons.  I had to leave the area after half an hour, as my feet were starting to get frost bite.   I had my rubber thongs (flip flops) on.    Not really appropriate foot wear for icy conditions.

During the past five days we also spent a lot of time in shopping centres, which were always beautifully airconditioned.   At least we could enjoy our coffee in comfort.

And with the hot weather comes glorious red sunsets.  

But I am so pleased to be feeling cool as I write this blog.