As mum used to so elegantly pit it: “I’m awa’ ta greasy spot.”
Neesters love to hate the weather. ‘Tsaffa cal’ or wet in the winter, and we harrumph in the summer on the occasional hot day.
Tell the truth, I’ve never been a’ that great in the heat. Nor have my pals. When we were 17 – never been sun-kissed – on our first foreign holiday across Europe by coach to Italy, me and my bosom were so desperate to tan our lily-white bits after two days and nights basting in an oven of a coach, we lay doon and seriously sunbathed, slathered in oil, for hours.
When she stood up to go, she executed a perfect Sailor’s Hornpipe and fell into a dead faint. Instantly, a couple of ambulance signores appeared and carted her off on a stretcher in their vannie, then to the nearest ospedale, leaving me and her mum in a funk.
She was OK within the hour, having been pumped full of the water we’d ignored and a blast about the dangers of the sun from the local Gino D’Polizia. Not so much black as burnt-affronted.
Maybe that memory is still baked in my psyche, but I’ve never again been able to toast on a lounger. I need to be inches from water so I can plunge and cool doon every 10 minutes or so.
When the kids were wee, we’d tour the length and breadth of Europe to those permanent camp sites, often with long, hot drives between. One day, in the south of France, when temperatures hit nearly the old 100F, we arrived plootered, desperate for a swim.
Roon the dunes to the nearby beach, I led the way. Lay on our towels in relief, only for me to spot all the other bods around us were… nakkit! Mummy, daddy, far div we look?
As I gathered my wee yins to my blinding bosie, their dirty-devil of a dad raced to the waves, dropped his trunks, and dived, laughing, right in. He wis laughin’ on the other side o’ his bare cheeks when he later discovered I’d nicked his breeks.
When the heat’s up, just relax
So, what’s my perfect day when temperatures are soaring? Doing what I did a pucklie years ago: a three-hour raft down the Rio Grande river in Jamaica. Bamboo boats for two, your own punter, doon through a cavern of emerald-green trees and bushes.
Calypso music syncopating from the banks. Locals swimming up bearing cocktails, platters of pineapple and mango. During bursts of tropical rain, they wade across with umbrellas.
The pair, bums in the river, laughed so hard they couldn’t move
Man, it was hot, hot, hot beneath that green canope. But so cool trailing your hand in the water.
Ahead of us, a lovely Newcastle couple. Just as we were about to land, their raft went so far doon, it hit rock bottom, suddenly stuck, when their poor punter did a perfect arc into the water.
The pair, bums in the river, laughed so hard they couldn’t move. A few surfacing bubbles and audible “putters” reinforced my suspicions of underwater parping.
So, when the heat’s up, just relax… and let it blow.
Moreen Simpson is a former assistant editor of the Evening Express and The Press & Journal, and started her journalism career in 1970
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