Moaning Lisa

Over the Christmas break conversation turned to the place art has in our culture, and in particular what makes certain pieces of art iconic. I’ve been fortunate over my lifetime to have travelled a lot for work which has given me the opportunity to see many of the great artworks. They hang in galleries as reminders of moments of genius where some artist or other has perfected a technique, or perhaps brought a new perspective or style to the fore. Each one, while having a spark that elevates it above the norm has become frozen in time as a reminder of the era or method that brought about its creation. However, the experience of seeing them can leave us with mixed emotions varying anywhere from wonder to vague disappointment and a feeling of what’s all the fuss about?

Recently, while in Paris we spent a day in the Louvre. The Louvre is the sort of place you can’t ignore, a Paris must see whether or not art is your thing. The sheer size of the buildings and collections is breathtaking. It reflects what we deem valuable as a society, not just in terms of wealth but in culture and history. As we slowly meandered through the various galleries it became obvious that certain objects had greater meaning than others, and that for certain individuals seeing particular works became a goal in itself.

Inevitably we came across the hall holding the Mona Lisa. Lisa is definitely an icon, recognizable by everyone. Having lived with Lisa’s presence my whole life I was curious to meet her face to face and see if she stood up to her reputation in real life. As we entered her chamber it became obvious that she had many more fervent admirers than just me. The crowd surrounding her was overwhelming. All I wanted was a few minutes with her, the chance to see if she could charm me with her smile. What surprised me however was how disinterested everyone seemed in Lisa, in the painting itself. Most were just there to take a photo. Cameras flashed incessantly despite the no flash signs. It was sad really. Here we were standing 20 deep before one of the world’s most celebrated artworks yet no one seemed to look at her except through the screen of cameras and phones.

It struck me as odd that people would travel so far to visit Lisa only to want to view her through a lens. It was almost as if the lens became a safe haven, a way to view her while being kept safe from her emotion. And why take a photo anyway? If all you want is a digital image then download one… it’s more likely to be clearer and better than anything we could take holding our phone above our head as we stand in a slowly moving tide of people.

She does smile that Lisa. Maybe she’s smiling at the silliness of it all. Maybe she’s amused by the thought that so many adore her but so few want to connect? We left her with a touch of sadness having only seen her from a distance, no picture taken to prove we were there. I’m content to have seen her from a distance, after all like most things iconic the image of it is more often better that the reality.

Peanut butter

There is nothing more satisfying than a piece of warm full grained toast with a thickish layer of good quality crunchy peanut butter smeared on it. The taste revives childhood memories and satisfies the mouth with a sticky savory slurry. And it has to be crunchy, smooth never really cuts it in the same way.

Father taught me to eat it with added salt and cracked pepper. Today the health regime prohibits the salt, unnecessary as it already was, but the fresh cracked pepper adds a spicy depth to an already almost prefect treat. I confess to slathering butter between my bread and peanut butter in most cases. That is unless I plan on adding honey as well. Peanut butter and honey, the favourite of many a child, turns out to be the most perfect desert-like snack. The warmth of the just toasted bread causes the peanut butter and honey to melt together creating a sticky amalgam of mouth watering delight. Irresistible, even to my more refined adult tastes. Recently Susan has expanded my peanut butter repertoire leading me to accept that peanut butter can be used in salad sandwiches, particularly with rocket (rucola) and tomato… who would have thought?

But why is it peanut butter? Butter it certainly isn’t. The Dutch call it pindakaas (peanut cheese) due to a protectionist law passed to preserve the dairy industry’s desire to keep the word butter to themselves. I wonder why those Dutch farmers so easily let go of the word cheese? Peanut butter was first patented in the US by a certain Canadian called Marcellus Gilmore Edson in 1884. Despite this fact I’ve heard many Dutchmen claim peanut butter as one of their nation’s greatest inventions in much the same way Australians claim the Kiwi’s pavlova as their own.

Our pantry is never without a jar of peanut butter. I eat it less than before simply because each luxuriously lavished toasted spread of it means more time on the cross-trainer to avoid it gathering around my waist. But when no one is looking I have been known to sneak down to the kitchen and grab a tablespoon full to quietly suck on while I’m working away on some project or other.  I think I may even get some now.

New year status

Many things turn on the New Year. We vow and reminisce, we plan and gather our thoughts towards an action we may not be able to carry out through the following twelve months. Some things end and some start. We get an imagined chance to start afresh, a new year, a clean slate.

The New Year is also a boundary and arbitrary line drawn to enable the world to sort things out. A new business or tax year, a time to renew or forsake memberships to clubs, teams and programs. A time where faithful membership is rewarded and those who have been tardy in ‘belonging’ are given another chance or downgraded according to how they behaved in the last twelve months.

I thought about this this morning as I realized that today marks a milestone in my life. Today I finally lose my premium platinum status and slip quietly into the base ranks of the frequent flier. For the last twelve years I managed to hold a top elite status with Delta, my airline of choice, as I relentlessly globetrotted for the cause. It was a status that afforded some relief from the ordinariness of business travel, making airport existence resemble something almost like a normal life.

Airline status is a prized commodity. Those who have it value it highly and jealously compare their ranking with colleagues and competitors. However an airline measures their elite tiers, each of those holding a status knows exactly what it takes to keep it, what benefits they’re entitled too and how to maximize the perks of life in the elite class.

Next time you fly, just watch how those elites hover around the gate counter measuring their chances for an upgrade and flashing their cards like well worn smiles. Feeling entitled, they take ownership at the head of the line and don’t bother to hide their smugness at finding themselves once again at the pointy end of the plane.

And how is such status earned? Have those with such privilege done anything to deserve the benefit? Are they part of the set known as the ‘great and the good’ whose deeds and nobility set them apart from the rest? No, all they’ve done is endure endless hours of airport drudgery, inevitable delays before catching a weekly red-eye home, usually at the expense of the company. Many envy those holding status without realising how trapped those elite’s feel in their endless cycle of flights, security screenings and baggage belts. Like many things that give one status, the getting of it is often not worth the effort.

What’s funny about the whole thing is how competitive people become. Nothing irks an elite more than seeing a lesser status placed ahead of them in the upgrade list, or feel the shame of not gaining access to the lounge because of some change in the rules. Elite’s value such things highly and quibble over missing miles in the hope of holding their hard-won position.

One year, as late December approached, realising I would fall 180 miles short of the 75,000 needed in a calendar year to retain my status I made a ‘mileage run’ to push me over the line. I had a trip planned to Lausanne , Switzerland, that I routed through Rome instead of taking the direct flight just to gain the extra miles needed to qualify. So for a measly 180 miles I added 6 hours travel and a stressful transit through Rome’s chaotic airport just to make sure I got the status. And I was not alone in such actions. Chatting to other elites on frequent trips revealed that many or most did or had done the same. Strange how much it seemed to matter at the time.

What is it in human nature that makes us so competitive in such things? We all like to feel we’re special, that we got a good deal or that we were treated better than the rest. In the end, does it really matter what seat we get on the plane or if we’re upgraded? I suppose that depends on how often one sits on a plane and how well or indifferently an airline treats you when you’re there. Delta were certainly good to me. Their frequent flier program was and is one of the most generous around. They repaid my twelve years loyalty and 1.2 million miles flown with a recognition that held me to the brand and kept me coming back again and again. That makes good business sense.

Strange now that it’s going to change. I’m not so competitive as I was in these things and am happy to sit anywhere on the plane for the amount of times I fly each year now. There is something nice about being ordinary again, it has removed the pressure and enabled me to breathe.

Thanks Delta for being so good to me over the years. If by some strange chance the nice people at Delta want to extend my status for another year, then that would be just fine. Otherwise, I’ll see you down the back.

Unscrabbeling Babel

You may have heard the old story of the Tower of Babel. As the story goes, there was a time when everyone spoke the same langauge and could communicate effectively without the effects of cultural and linguistic bias. This clear unencumbered communication enabled people to try something that may have been impossible, to build a tower that reached into heaven itself. Their dream of reaching beyond the possible caused their deity to scatter them and confuse their language to block their attempt, saying: because they have the same langauge and say the same thing, nothing they purpose will be impossible for them. With their languages confused, they could no longer talk and dream together, their power thus constrained. The story itself is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly it points out that actually nothing is really impossible if we put our minds to it, and secondly, that clear and unified communication is the key to making it happen.

Clear communication is important. In today’s international market place the likelihood of us encountering a person whose native language is not the same as ours is multiplied over and over again. Simple transactions can be muddied by a lack of understanding, meanings lost with different syntax, linguistic rhythm and grammar. The result leaves us lost as to what is said and agreed.

I worked and lived in a bilingual situation for ten years. As a communicator this posed unique problems. I could never be sure of whether half my audience understood what I was saying or if they were only receiving a watered down message through a translation that may not have been entirely accurate. It was only as I became fluent in that other tongue that I began to see the how my words had been at times misunderstood. From then on I became a stickler for accuracy and a student of concise and clear messages.

I see this same issue play out everyday on the web. Especially in business. E-trade, the practice of doing business online, has opened many new markets for companies that would have been impossible before. For example, I was looking for a new cable to link my macbook to the HDTV the other day and was unable to find one anywhere in my region. A quick search online delivered the cable at 25% of the cost from a company in Singapore with a promise of the same delivery time as if I had bought it from a local company down the road. Impressive, as well as being time and money saving.

Yet even with these innovations, many companies fail to see how important a clear and well written international, usually English, version of their web services is. Many European and Asian companies have employees whose English would be classed as very good.  Often these employees do a creditable job of translating the original langauge text into a fairly good English page, and I’ve read many such pages. The problem is that language can be such a subtle beast and the internet an extremely unforgiving environment. It’s estimated that a site will have less than 20 seconds to grab someone’s attention and hold it. So in that initial 20 seconds, anything that is less than perfect will result in clicks away from the site. Companies are often oblivious to how many potential clients may have been lost by simple grammatical or other language errors.

This problem is pretty easy to fix in most cases. I’ve been doing some contracted work in the field we call Translation Tuning lately. The goal of this kind of service is to make non-native English sites more attractive to those who are native English speakers or to those who have a high level of English as a second language. Check our site or another company, Brand-ID, I work with for more details.

All it takes is a little effort to undo Babel’s effect on our communications. The results may be a tower you never thought you’d build.

If a picture paints a thousand…

Recently I have been working on a few branding projects. These projects have sparked thoughts on the link between a branded image and the words a company or individual uses to describe their brand or product. We’re all aware of certain iconic brand symbols, images or trademarks that have enough power to trigger a response of recognition in us. Sometimes it’s the name, at other times a well designed trade image. The result of those visual clues to us, the end user, is a residual goodwill and understanding of the product. The best branding concepts create the desire for us to align ourselves with that particular successful company or product, driving up company profile and profit.

Mostly it seems, a brand’s image sells us a glimpse of a lifestyle we’d love to attain. The mental images created by the very best of brands tend to lift us from our ordinary lives and give us the illusion of a better way, happier and somehow more prosperous. But can an image alone be enough to close the sale? With ever increasing access to more and more product information detail through the internet, today’s consumer is becoming more aware of what she really wants, where he can get it cheaper and what other alternatives there are on the market. 

As a response, today’s smart branders will therefore develop a brand image that is more than just skin deep. A good logo and imagery must remain highly visible and distinctive as a tool to draw the eye in. The feel of the product must still be conveyed by letting us see what we’re aspiring to. But added to that a clever brander must develop a very clear and descriptive text to under gird the product.

Good text is more than a mere descriptor. It informs us and reassures us. It helps us understand that the company we’re dealing with has more to offer than just a great look and feel for design. In the photoshopped age an image is unreliable. Words however, or well written words at least, convey meaning and empower people to make good choices in a less emotional way. With information becoming so freely available it may just be time for substance to start making a comeback over image. And what was it that a picture painted a thousand of anyway?

He died, though he didn’t mean to

It’s coming up for five years since my father died. Jack’s death was a milestone in my life as it was the last in his. It’s true that we all have to go at some time yet the manner of his passing was unexpected and well before what he would have considered his time.

Dad was an accountant by trade, and a senior accountant at that. He’d spent most of his working life career-building, working his way up through a handful of companies to become the chief financial officer of a multinational that built among other things power stations. A hard worker, he prided himself on what he’d achieved while remaining realistic of his own capabilities and expectations. In the end whatever measure you use, you’d have to say that he was successful in his career, a person others deemed to have been a winner in a corporate sense.

At the point where he’d achieved all he could in corporate life, and as retirement age approached, dad chose not to slip into a life of ease, but rather to launch out in business on his own. Using a significant slice of his retirement fund, he bought a run-down rental car franchise and set about re-inventing himself. Dad was not the sort of guy who was ever going to age gracefully. Fishing, gardening or other tested retiree pursuits held no interest for father. It was never in doubt that after his real job finished, he’d find something commercial to do, ensuring a long and productive 3rd age of life. I’d always though he might start a restaurant to indulge his passion in cooking and consuming good food and wine when he retired, yet car rentals seemed a good opportunity and one that would utilise his sharp business mind.

He’d never had a sick day in his life as far as I can remember. Oxen like, he’d keep up a schedule that would daunt the hardiest of workers. When his busy official workday ended, you’d find him in the kitchen tackling some fresh salmon, or a French dish, often working late on his culinary explorations. And renovate…. his weekends were filled with do-it-yourself projects he’d hoped would ultimately add some value to the property. My father was fit and busy, he could never have been accused of being lazy.

So it came as a shock to hear of his illness. The first news came when his wife Janet called me in England to say he was having some tests. Apparently back in Sydney where he lived, he’d had some difficulty breathing. They’d initially guessed he might have developed some form of asthma. Nothing to be alarmed of at this early stage Janet said, assuring me she’d get back to me when they knew more. It was my brother who rang me a week or so later with the news that dad had been diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. Originally the diagnosis made no sense. Most who were affected by this disease had worked in industries that involved building or mining, those who’d worked closely with the killer fiber. Dad had sat cocooned in well-appointed offices in what you might think of as safe environs. How could it be that he’d been afflicted by this terminal, incurable disease?

We speculated about the back-yard garage he’d demolished while we were kids. In the 60′s and 70′s there were no public concerns about the asbestos based cement sheeting surrounding us at home, school and workplaces. Dad had demolished that garage over a weekend selling the pieces to some other unwitting misfortunate. Or maybe it was the sheeting he and I had fitted to the ceiling in our old house around 1980. By most accounts the exposure from these sorts of activities would not have necessarily been enough to trigger his illness, though we are warned that there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos and the products made from it are now banned. After some investigation it turns out that a site he worked at in Ultimo during the 70′s was one of the most heavily polluted asbestos sites in Australia. The Dairy Farmers production plant probably killed him, even though he spent very little time on the factory floor.

It took about 18 months from the first diagnosis until he passed away. I visited him in Sydney for 3 weeks in an awkward attempt to find a closeness we seldom had in early years. I’m glad I took the time to be with him even though he remained distracted, trying to secure his business interests before his choked lungs finally gave way. We did have a moment however where things were said… it was worth the 20,000 mile round trip for those few short minutes.

In the end he didn’t mean to die. He’d banked on another 10 years at least, 70 being far to young according to the average he said. I called him from Amsterdam the day before he died. He’d sounded cheerier, clearer than I’d heard him for some time. I told him what I’d been doing and about my children, his grandchildren. I mentioned each of them by name and boasted of their schooling achievements. I told him they’d be alright, that they’d do well in life to which he replied: I won’t live to see that. We both knew he was right and said our unknowing final farewells. He died at home later that afternoon with many things still unresolved, fighting for every breath to the last.

I’m not sure if we can ever really die well… there’s often too much life in the way to allow that. But after watching dad struggle with his own personal battle I made a mental note to at least attempt it when my time comes. Hopefully that’s a long way off yet, but I want to be prepared. Maybe that was his parting gift to me, an opportunity to see how hard it is to let go and flow with the moment, whatever that moment brings.

the pace of 21st century life

It’s raining again outside and I’ve come to value the sound of its regular patter on my tin roof. The reason I can enjoy its sound now is because lately I’ve slowed down enough to hear it. Previously I might have known it was there, seen it, been aware of it, but its presence may have been noted more with annoyance… it would have slowed my travel, delayed my flight or possibly kept people away from meetings I was running or events I staged. It would have been something to overcome and conquer instead of just being what it is…. rain.

Much of life, particularly in a high pressure career, is geared towards the negotiation of problems and the meeting of deadlines. The more pressured our lives become, the more adept we become at trying to control our environment to minimise disruption to whatever it is we deem to be of high importance. Whether those things we value so highly really are that meaningful is yet to be seen and whether the push through at all costs mentality many of us end up carrying is a healthy way to live is up for question.

Until very recently I placed a high value on such things. My particular position carried with it a very grueling travel schedule. I was on a plane going somewhere on average every 2.6 days clocking up hundreds of thousands of flight miles every year as I lived between two major cities in separate countries each week. My work spanned four continents with thousands of contacts globally. I loved my job… it was a calling, not a position, and I count myself fortunate to have been able to do what I did for the past 20 years or so.

I became an expert in handling tight schedules and deadlines. I had travel down to the finest of arts, calculating to the second how to negotiate an airport so as to minimise time in queues and lines. I could spot the slow line at check-in from a distance and prided myself for living in the hand luggage only world of time saving. I became so good at timing my airport runs that in my old home town airport, Amsterdam Schiphol, I could catch the 2:10 train if my flight from London arrived at the gate by no later than 2:04. I could then be at my desk a quarter of an hour later for my weekly Tuesday afternoon meeting. I was the ultimate time manager relying on my own skill and the systems of transport I frequented to ferry me around as many as three countries in a single day to speak at meetings, deliver a message or meet and greet those needing my attention.

Yet the sad thing is that the more I got done and the more time I saved the more time poor I felt. Beware those who would get in my way! A world where ever second counts becomes a world of short tempers. My intolerance for those who couldn’t match my speed became increasingly overwhelming. The guy who didn’t have his laptop out before he arrived at the x-ray security machine, or the person whose passport was still in the bag at border control… these were the enemy, to be hated for their tardy actions that slowed my relentless passage through life. As little as a five second delay could mean missing the train, leaving me waiting an extra 20 minutes on the platform, quietly fuming at the unnecessary delay. And all for what? Did my efforts actually change that much? Was I saving lives or influencing the face of history? Probably not, however, my own sense of self-importance drove me on… another country, another opportunity, all the while my own sense of who I was becoming lost in the blur of what life had become.

So I value the sound of the rain now. It reminds me of what is, and of what should be. My pace has slowed and my expectations adjusted to a more sustainable realistic pace of life. Just this week I had an experience that shows me how far I’ve come in anchoring myself again. I had a business meeting with Joe to discuss a client I wanted him to meet. Joe and I had probably 5 minutes of real business to discuss, but as I met him late on Wednesday afternoon we struck up a conversation. He made a cup of tea, offered a biscuit and we got to chatting. We talked about ourselves, our children, jobs we’d had and the places we’d seen. We’d agreed the deal within a few minutes and yet lingered in dialogue discovering things about each other. I stayed with Joe for almost 45 minutes, a thing my previous time poor self may have never done. I came away feeling like I’d done some real work, a connection was made and a pace set that I’d be able to keep up with this time.

I never again want to feel that pressure of the clock. I’ve settled into a pace of life I enjoy with time to think and see and feel. The pauses make the time I spend more valuable emphasising the difference between work and play, rest and action. And what does it matter if it takes 30 seconds more, or even an extra day or two? The things that are really important will still be there tomorrow.

How’s your accent?

I love language. The way words flow and interact to reveal the meaning of our thoughts has been something that has always fascinated me. At times we take our ability to communicate somewhat for granted, we allow our words to flow from us without ever thinking about the process involved. The sounds we make that have collectively become our language have evolved and continue to evolve around us unseen. New words come into being as old words fall out of usage. Attempts have been made to tame the language, rules regarding grammar and spelling formulated to police our communications. But despite all of this, or maybe in rebellion against it, our langauge continues to flow and change course as it chooses. We users control its destiny, the rules of usage lie in our hands rather than in the dictates of the academics. Where our speech will be in 10, 20 or even 50 years time will be interesting to see. For certain the sound of our modern English will lie in a different zone.

English is a fascinating language. Eclectic by nature, it has grown by piggy-backing on the tongue of its neighbours. Just how a regional language from a small island with only 5 million speakers in 1600 came to dominate the world is a bit of a mystery. Other languages, better structured and more widespread seemingly crumbled as our tongue took hold through trade and settlement around the globe. Today maybe half the world can communicate in English at some level with 375 million people calling it their native tongue.

And it all started from such humble beginnings. The roots of English go back to the 5th century when Northern England was beginning to be colonized by Frisian farmers from western Holland and other Teutonic tribes. They brought the bones of our language, displacing the native Celtic dialects as they settled and established their way of life. Many of the basic words that hold our language together come from this immigration wave. Words like; and, an, the, is, it, all, how, what, man, he, hand, foot, time, house, mouse, in, out, sit, stand, sand, water, ate, bread, cold, boat, book. These words are still found in common today between English and Dutch, the closest major language to our own and the oldest remaining written Teutonic language, albeit with a different spelling and slightly different rhythmical accent. The Norse then added other layers of Germanic tones and words as the Vikings swept through the British Isles followed later by French in the wake of the 1066 invasion. In the most basic of explanations we can see that the bones of our speech remain low German while the legal, cultural and business terms of English reflect the power shift that occurred with poor King Harold’s demise at Hastings.

All this goes to show that language has and will remain in a state of constant flux. Even our regional accents point to the constant morphing of what we hear and speak; they offer us an insight into how our language will continue to grow and diversify in future. Australia, until very recently has shown very little regional variation in the sound of its English dialect. Compare this however to the UK where vast differences thrive between regional accents, a young man from Paisley’s speech being almost unintelligible to a well-to-do middle class Southerner despite only living 400 miles apart. The difference that we hear is actually the separation of more than a thousand years of history and not those few short miles. Therein lies the difference in most accents. They may use the same words, however the way those words are pronounced is overlain with deep cultural differences. In rhythm and sound the Northern UK has held its Germanic hard vowel sounds while the South surrendered to softer the French, this being most noticeable in the a sound.

Throw into that historical mix the diversity of English spoke in Africa, the Caribbean, the Indian sub-continent, North America and the Antipodes and our language becomes a soup of variety caused by geographical influences and the eclectic gathering of words and sounds from the preexisting indigenous cultures of those areas. The more universal our tongue becomes the more diversified as well, that diversification being driven by differences having nothing to do with the language itself. You’d think maybe that with globalization our language would become more regulated and universal in its sound. The reverse seems to be true however. Today generational and social differences drive a further diversification, texting, messaging and internet spelling emerging as yet another dialect before our eyes. And then there’s Globish… the simplified English that is spoken between a business person from Japan to another business person from Eastern Europe; they can more easily understand each other than they can a native speaker, the language pared back to the basic 200 or so words needed to communicate their need.

And each of us is able, with practice, to shift our own linguistic sound. People have practiced this for centuries, often in a desire to acquire a more cultured tone in the hope of escaping economic or social backwaters. I’ve even done it myself, much to the frustration of some that are close to me. Having lived and worked globally for the last ten years I find my vowels shift and change like a chameleon, often molding themselves to the needs of the hearer. I now say my r’s with a sound more akin to an American, a result of the Dutch rolled r instead of the more usual Australian r that sounds like a shortened a. I oscillate between a hard and soft a sound depending on whom I’m addressing, sometimes sounding English, sometimes Australian. When in the American South I easily slip into a Southern drawl to make myself understood while ordering tomatoes.

Language is a tool, and in the end we all use it to gain the advantage of being able to communicate effectively. It is alive, in the sense that it will grow and change. If we stay flexible in its usage, communicating more effectively, we will gain an advantage in life. It’s ours to play with and explore, utilizing its potential to make ourselves understood by every method we can. Long live language, long live change.

the heat

There is an unforgiving relentlessness about the heat of an Australian summer. It starts early in the day as I lie unsuspecting in the coolness of my cavelike dwelling, the weatherboards offering some illusion of protection against elemental forces. As I shelter in here I’m able to fool myself for a time into believing that this is a normal climate, temperate and sustaining rather than this brutal baking heat.

Out of doors the shadows become oases of less warm air, pockets of relief that shift and change with the spinning globe. The ground itself becomes unfriendly as it radiates the angry sun reflected, cooking us from beneath now as well as from above. There is no escape, I may as well be on the moon or Mars as the basic conditions become hostlie to our liquid human frame. The air is so dry, I can feel the moisture being drawn from me, my sweat relieving and endangering me at once. Walking any distance becomes a chore, hat warding off sunstroke, long sleeves the burning rays.

Before the sun even threatens its zenith the quick rapidly climbs through 30 to 35 passing 38.5, the old hundred. There is a passive acceptance amongst the people as they mumble the numbers to one another. We surrender to the 40′s with a slowing gait and resignation. 45 today, though it could peak higher. The same tomorrow and the next day. It feels like it will never change, that a permanence has set in, the hot high pressure system will forever hold the cooling clouds at bay. It can only get hotter, all hope of relief is put on hold.

The lawn has died. Even the invasively eternal kikuyu grass, unstoppable in most circumstances has given up. It lies brown and burnt orange on the sandy dirt. It tried so hard but was unable to hold its own without the rains. And we can’t water… the posted signs remind us everywhere… water capacity in our reservoirs drops like a crashing share market. Each plant in the garden must fight for itself, Darwin’s speculations ringing true in their battles. In our garden the fittest will see it through and those too water thirsty and weak will follow the dodo.

I pity the outdoor worker, those that are called to toil beneath the shadeless sun. Helen wrote of loving a sunburnt country, but maybe she witnessed it from a safe distance or in the comfort of the shade. Our climate has shaped us…. you see it in our skin, the design of our houses and hear it in the chit-chat of our folk. We know how to deal with it by experience. Draw the curtains, shutter the house and make sure we park the car in the shade… that way we’ll survive the siege. Yet some choose, inexplicably, to bake themselves, roasting under the killer rays turning foolishly darker as each day passes.

As for me, I’ll shelter until it passes, be that a day, a week or a month. Like all things tolerated it will pass, or perhaps I’ll acclimatize again after many years away. There’s no use complaining as no one will listen and no one cares as they each fight their own battle. So I choose to smile and embrace what is for now…. and scan the far horizon for just a glimmer of a cloud.