It's easy and convenient to blame the weather's extreme doses of heat for sparking brain fade and forgetfulness because it can't answer back. Photo / File
It's easy and convenient to blame the weather's extreme doses of heat for sparking brain fade and forgetfulness because it can't answer back. Photo / File
COMMENT Ahh the heat.
It can be most challenging and sapping but it can also be a good friend when things go wrong.
Because it is easy to blame, and can't complain back at you when you do blame it.
So it is the perfect scapegoat. You forget where you leftsomething? Must be this intolerable heat.
Forgot to get some gas to tank up the empty lawnmower? Must be this overbearing heat.
Picked the wrong six numbers for the old Lotto draw ... again? Must be this unsettling heat.
I've heard people remark that "it's just too hot to think" so being able to blame the hot and humid air for erring somewhere along the line is a pretty acceptable way out of a bind.
Mind you, there is some factuality to this approach, for excessive heat can affect the body's workings.
Too much heat can cause light-headedness and in extreme cases nausea.
It's like walking around all day suffering from a high temperature condition ... because it is a high temperature condition, except there's not a lot you can do about it, except seek shade or water.
Heat also makes the old brain wander, and wonder, and that's not a bad thing.
For when the mind wanders it thinks about things it probably wouldn't normally think about ... like in "normal" early summer temperatures.
What we've been getting thus far is steaming February material.
So while sweltering out the back the other day my mind wandered and got hooked on a dog and a giraffe.
Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.
This was a story which emerged from a zoo where a dog had effectively adopted a baby giraffe, which was suffering ill-health.
The dog would not leave his ill mate alone and would snuggle up to him, comforting him.
The baby giraffe had a full-time devoted caregiver, and it was a big old doggy.
Great little story but unfortunately did not have the best of outcomes as the ailing baby giraffe succumbed, and doggy had lost his chum.
It was such an unusual and uplifting story that I read it again, and raised a glass to doggy.
It was certainly more uplifting than being reminded, repeatedly, that half of Europe was locked up in protests and strikes, and Trump and Kim Jong Un were at each other's throats again over nuclear missiles and trade sanctions and who had the dopiest hair style.
And some story about massive transportation strikes across Paris because they're looking to raise the retirement age from 62.
Sixty-two? Of course it should be raised.
Get back to work and continue to do so for at least another three years.
And then there's an old doggy, and an ailing baby giraffe he stayed close to and cared for until it passed away, who put everything human into the shade.
Then, mid-afternoon, there was real shade as a large bank of dark cloud edged across from the northwest, replacing the blue skies and orange smoke haze and it brought with it some good sized spots of rain.
"It's raining," I said to myself as I adjusted the sun umbrella.
"Gotta get a photo of this...no one'll believe me."
However, it ceased only seconds after it had started and the droplets which had fallen pretty much evaporated when they hit the ground.
Then I thought about the weather madness down south where roads had been closed, properties and urban streets flooded and sandbags replacing sandcastles.
They have taken a hammering, and I noted that the temperature down in Oban, on Stewart Island, was set to reach a "high" of ... 15C.
I sat and read that in a temperature double that figure.
Weather is a strange thing, and apparently getting stranger, and in parts of Australia now it is a most aggressive enemy as it fuels giant fire fronts.
"It's GW," I was told a week or so back. "Great War?" I replied. "No...the global warming thing."
I reckon they should re-title it global warning. We've had enough of them lately.
So yeah, it's easy and convenient to blame the weather's extreme doses of heat for sparking brain fade and forgetfulness because it can't answer back.
But when it wants to make an extreme statement itself there's no way we can answer back either.
Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.
