Summer XIV. Climate

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Summer XIII. Town and country

Vituperation of the English climate is foolish. A better climate does not exist -- for healthy people; and it is always as regards the average native in sound health that a climate must be judged. Invalids have no right whatever to talk petulantly of the natural changes of the sky; Nature has not them in view; let them (if they can) seek exceptional conditions for their exceptional state, leaving behind them many a million of sound, hearty men and women who take the seasons as they come, and profit by each in turn. In its freedom from extremes, in its common clemency, even in its caprice, which at the worst time holds out hope, our island weather compares well with that of other lands. Who enjoys the fine day of spring, summer, autumn, or winter so much as an Englishman? His perpetual talk of the weather is testimony to his keen relish for most of what it offers him... So, granting that we have bad days not a few, that the east wind takes us by the throat, that the mists get our joints, that the sun hides his glory too often and too long, it is plain that the result of all comes to good, that it engenders a mood of zest under the most various aspects of heaven, keeps an edge on our appetite for open-air life....

Esperanza.

There has been a revolution of late in my household. Contrasting my own days with Henry Ryecroft's, I couldn’t help noticing how much time I spent running errands, going to the market, doing laundry, and the like. I did some research (the Internet is an amazing place) and discovered I could (for $1000 a month) hire someone to do most of this, and more. Now Esperanza comes in four mornings a week while I’m at the gym or at a cafe -- I rarely even see her.

Four days a week the dishes are done and the place is generally cleaned up (I keep the place even tidier than before) and a cold lunch, usually some sort of salad appears in my kitchen. Once a week my dirty clothes magically move from basket to neatly folded piles. Twice a week my shopping list disappear only for the items on the list to show up in my cabinets and refrigerator the next day. Suddenly I have all this additional free time. My day is no longer interrupted by my doing all these things myself. I’m still far from Henry Ryecroft’s (or Hans Castorp’s) near perfect days of ease -- for one thing there’s my Greening work -- but I’m now much closer to this ideal.

Black poodle.

Just now I was walking to the Bank Cafe when a big black poodle jumped out of a parked car and started following me down the street, as his owners called to him from the car. This cracked me up because, near the beginning of Faust, Mephisto first appears to Faust in the form of a black poodle. Even the animal world contrives to make reference to my obsessions.

Next: Summer XV. Age + online communities.