HOT

It’s so hot out I bust a window.

Summer came early to Melbourne this year.  Up until this week, I was convinced that Mike and I had unwittingly moved to the Seattle of the southern hemisphere.  It had been gray and rainy and a tepid 60 degrees for the first four months we’d been here.  A friend in my office, a native Melbournian, said that when the warm weather comes, it comes all at once, and boy was he right.  It’s been 30 degrees Celsius or above the past four days – it’s the first time it’s been that hot here for that many days in 80 years.  More accurately, it hits 30 C (86 degrees Fahrenheit) by 9am, then gets up to 35 (95 F) by 11:30 am, and stays that way until, say, 10 at night.

Last night, however, we had a reprieve:  by about 8:30, it felt cooler out than it had in a long while.  So, we opened the windows to air out our apartment for the first time in a week.  (Note on architecture here:  apparently when it gets hot like this, you’re supposed to shut all the windows and blinds, because that’s the only way to keep any cool air in the building.  It works surprisingly well – though it’s definitely warm in our apartment, it hasn’t been uncomfortable by any means…yet.)  Since our building was built in 1925, most of the windows are in rough shape – the sashes, which are made of frayed rope, are mostly broken, including the ones on our kitchen window.  When I went to shut the window before we went to bed last night, the thing came down so hard that it shattered all over me.  I was none the worse for wear, but now we have some unwelcome ventilation action going on. 

We let Geoffrey know about my incident, and he was nice about it and said that he would get us a new window.  But then he started listing off all the other windows that are broken in the building, which leads me to believe they’ve been broken for some time.  We emphasized that we’re dealing with more than a crack in the pane – there’s a big hole in the window – so maybe that will convince him to fix it more quickly than he did the stove.  We shall see.

In the meantime, I’m off to the Salvo to find a big pitcher to make iced tea in. The heat’s not expected to break anytime soon.

BROKEN