Monsoon Weather - Various
Greece, for those of you who don't live here, goes into total shutdown in August. It's too hot for the industries to keep operating, and I swear, if they did it would be a crime against humanity in this weather, so this sets off a chain reaction where everything else winds down too.
The streets are pretty much deserted as whole neighbourhoods cash in their annual leave and depart to their respective villages for at least three weeks, often more.
The knock-on effect for someone like me who works from home is that I have nowhere to go now. Practically all my friends are either out of the city or melting in the sun and there is no bellydance class until September. You actually start to forget that other people exist in August. I'm just starting to come out from my wedding stress hangover and have not called anyone to thank them for their help/attendance/present.
With me sitting at home isolated I have nothing better to do than to try recipes out of Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess, a wedding present from my sisters that was obviously hinting at something. My match-box flat is bursting at the seams with so much stuff I periodically go on strike because I'm sick of tidying it. And my oven is broken and won't go beyond a certain temperature without tripping the main fuse of the flat so all my biscuits and pastry are coming out looking sickly pale.
So with nought all to do (apart from work, but who works in August! Someone should tell London that!) my favourite hobby is picking fights with Mr Zeus. It's the heat, the boredom, the not having a holiday destination with only two weeks left before we leave, the dog, my eyebrows, whatever! Anything and everything is fight fodder this time of year.
I have always said I love the summer, but yesterday I spent the day with rain sounds playing off the internet while I worked. I suppose I'm still reeling from the super sun exposure I got running errands before the wedding. I don't drive, so I have to walk everywhere, or wait for buses or taxis in the blistering heat. It was the first time in three years that I wished for rain.
5 comments:
Hang on there Missy, only 3-4 months of heat left!
Don't get me wrong, I like the heat. I just have almost no friends left in the city to enjoy summer nights with!
i love athens in august. not midday, mind you, but the evenings are wonderful -- no crowds anywhere... and driving around is great with less traffic.
i prefer to stay in athens in august and vacation in september, where, again, there are less crowds outside athens and the weather is much more mellow.
you don't have to depend on others. take an evening and stroll around plaka or see the acropolis or go to sounion -- so many beautiful places to see.
Accompany you with the 'pray for rain'! Surviving now five years here, didn't help much to get used to an Athens summer...
sorry sweetie, can't understand you on this here, it was raining here till early july, didn't miss rain that much, it was a quite cold summer at the begining. Thank God the superheated days of this summer were messured in one hand, although august is still young. I still wonder how people live over there, i mean sure Thessaloniki is a big city too, with the ups and downs Athina has too, but at least we can breathe a little over here.
:/
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