Don't Bother

August is the sleep month. Some businesses close altogether, some work only half days, and some probably would prefer that no-one bothered them. People really can't be bothered in August. The heat is gruelling, and for one part of society that does bother - drivers - the heat makes going anywhere a gruelling event of cars baked by the sun or frozen by air-conditioning or blown by sand and confronted by endless streams of tourists with lilos crossing the roads where they shouldn't.

No-one can be bothered. To do anything invites an outpouring of sweat, to do nothing invites an outpouring of sweat, a pair of clammy hands, a pair of feet dirtied by the dust that insinuates itself inside sandals, a desperate desire for something cold to drink, a seeking of shade or the wind of the beach. Pity the poor delivery men, pushing trolleys, unloading and loading, drenched after a couple of minutes and spending the day climbing in and out of steamy truck cabs, sliding on the seat, unable to grip the wheel because of the wetness of the hands and the boiling plastic. Or the butane chaps, humping the weights of containers from the lorry, parping impatiently as they come across an empty bottle outside a gate, ten euro notes that become immediately absorbent, like toilet paper, as they are handed over by customers cursing the need to step out into the sun. Or the police on control duties dressed in their long trousers, staring ominously from behind the ever-present very dark and sinister sunglasses, tetchy and inclined to give someone hell. Or waiters, often also in long trousers, forced to move in a constant routine of picking up, setting down, wiping sweat from their wrists across their damp foreheads in an attempt to not soak the order docket, the heat and smell of a lunch leaping at them or the quickly dripping glasses of iced glasses rolling droplets down the arm or onto those trousers. Or anyone who moves from a ninety-degree exterior to an Arctic interior, the constant shifts in body temperatures, up and down like erratic blood-pressure monitors, causing sniffs and lightheadedness.

No-one can be bothered. Well some of us. Bloggers. The soporific swelter of mid-afternoon makes the eyes close, the gentle scraping of the fallen bougainvillaea bracts on the terrace lulls, the breeze through the persiana wafts the lace, waving it lazily, idly. And then a moto cracks the somnolence, a lizard jerks quizzically on the terrace door, kids with a football suddenly bounce past with incongruous energy, one of those two wasps-in-one things darts into vision, a flying black malevolence, one part docked to the mother ship; and some of us can then be bothered - to go to the beach. And then you realise that summer is only just about to start. It's back - the footy.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Depeche Mode, http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcrfa_depeche-mode-walking-in-my-shoes_music. Today's title - Colombian-Lebanese, who she?

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