Summer's a bummer

I have never felt kinship with ovens. They signify heat, burning, and a Vulcan-ish degradation that does no good to anyone. But I live in Dubai. Where nature itself becomes an oven in summer, and man, like steak, transforms into a sizzling mass of melting fat and brown skin.

To most people, summer is beaches, ice creams, chilled beers, even colder Chablis, and bikinis. To others, it is peeling noses, blistered skin, and red rashes. Happy days, essentially. Especially for those who live in European climes, where rain, fog, mist, and grey are the most frequently used words.

Summer creates a two-way traffic lane. The folks who call this country home go back to their actual homes, or congregate in said grey climes, glad to be away from the near-blinding sunshine, roads crowded with the pale migrants, and heat that can fry eggs on the pavement (been there, done that...). The city is suddenly overrun with paunchy, pale migrants from grey, dystopian lands, hoping to soak in the heat, get sand in their sandals and proudly carry back the "Dubai Tan". In this part of the world, sun, sand, blue sky, and air conditioning are part of the landscape. Like Chicken Tikka Masala in Brixton.

Where I live, summer is not so much a weather pattern as a retail extravaganza. Summer implies massive "sales", "fantastic offers", and stock clearance promotions of last year's parkas and woolens. Because we trade in everything which can earn a margin!

If you are here at this time of the retail calendar, summer is something to be enjoyed from the icy-cool confines of your home, office, car, or nearest temple to retail excess. Though near-nudity is frowned upon, most people in the open push the margin (aka the hemline) as much as possible without being bunged into the dark confines of a holding cell (also air conditioned, by the way).

Summer is all very fine and dandy. But when you live in a country where the sun shines for most of the year, ditto blue skies, the temperature in summer is that of a rare steak (pardon the meaty references), and rain is a four-letter word you read about in rare manuscripts, you do yearn for a touch of the Boreas, a whiff of cold, and a nod to Jack Frost.

I can take summer or leave it. In my home country, summer was a precursor to the monsoon and the start of the new school term, both in June. These are not happy memories. My name means "winter", and though not a cold person, I am happiest in this weather.

And where I live, winter is not so much a weather pattern as a retail extravaganza. And the temperature is akin to a well-iced Riesling.