Summer

Feels like another three-minute post coming on. It's late and I've pulled the blinds down because I don't like the thought that eyes from the other side of the courtyard might be watching me. Am I getting paranoid or what? (Crunch on the gravel now and you'll really scare me). Never even think of prying eyes when I'm here with Bud (and could occasionally be doing something worth watching - though, come to think of it, never in the living room as the sofa's too small....) I digress.

It's been an absolutely gorgeous day here. Blue, blue sky and blazing hot sun. Must have been up in the high 20's. I met my dear friend Cleo - not her real name and she doesn't want to be blogged about - in the Vondelpark, Amsterstam's answer to Central Park. The place was plastered with bodies, living ones, in various states of undress, strewn across the grass and huddled near the water's edge of the artificial ponds that aren't big enough to call lakes. I cycled over there from the computer shop where I'd been ogling a rather classy Sony notepad that I think I'm going to buy instead of a Mac. (Sorry, Rebecca, I'll have to borrow someone else's to see your blog in all its true splendour!) I don't want to mess up my degree course by grappling with file transfers from PC to Mac. A Reliable Source in the Far East, my brother, has told me there are still glitches in that procedure... I digress...

So I cycled over to the Vondelpark and stopped at the hamburger stall that doubles as an icecream place. When the Italian owner had finished dusting the stall front, or whatever it was that he was doing with his back to me and talking to someone else, I managed to get him to dig out a two-dollop, 2 euro ice cream-in-cone for me. I sat on my bike under a nearby tree - must preserve the pale skin at all costs, you know - marvelling at how all my fellow human beens were lying there stripped to the waist, with bare arms, wobbling cleavages, hairy legs and what have you and wondering why they'd realised that today was SUMMER, and I hadn't.

You can tell I'm over the hill. I still expect there to be seasons that come and go in a regular, orderly sort of way. For nearly half my adult life, we haven't had them - not like we used to in the good ol' days, you know, when winter gave way gradually to spring and the temperatures rose gradually and the summers were always long and hot. Weren't they? Well, I remember the ones that were, anyway. No, I can't be doing with these sudden blasts of heat. I need time to prepare. At least, time to dig out that T-shirt with an African design on that I bought at the Oosterpark music festival last year. I did find it when I got back this evening and put it on but it was too crumpled and thick and felt like it had been made to wear in winter. Pity I didn't find it 10 days ago...

So I had this ice cream and then I cycled a bit further into the park, to the round tea house that's been one of my favourite watering holes ever since I first came to Amsterdam. It's the place I picked for my very first date with Bud, by the way, but we never actually spent the date there because I was 15 minutes late and bumped into him as he was leaving the place. Two minutes later and I would have missed a whole new life! I digress... I scanned the the crowd sitting there soaking up the sun but couldn't see Cleo so went up the metal stairs to the top floor and walked around it (it's a round teahouse, remember). Still no Cleo so I came down again and grabbed a chair near the entrance, in the shade. I like to see the sun but sit in the shade. Fortunately, so does Lucilla, to give her another name, coming as she does from a place in the Med - or is it the Adriatic - where they see the sun all the time. It was great to see her and to sit out in the open, enjoying the blue sky and the bright green of the trees. We had a good natter, as girls do - all of which is embargoed until further notice... I do NOT blog about you.

Then I came home and studied. I actually did sit inside on this absolutely glorious day, this first summer of 2005 - because there'll probably be another one after we've revisited spring and winter - and read various bits of some incredibly dry books. And asked myself what the hell I was thinking of, signing up for a degree course (I don't want a degree, I've already got one) on something that requires me to think in detail about my job on Saturday nights. Do something creative, adventurous for goodness sake. Oh, hold on, don't mention that word 'adventure'. I'm just in the process of throwing all my cards up in the air - figuratvely speaking - and seeing where they land. I may be moving in the not too distant future. Or, more to the point, my dear Pal may be moving first.

He should be tucked up in bed now in the room that used to be mine in my childhood home. What is that guy up to? He's having a great time, I can tell you. And now I'm off to join him in the Land of Nod. Good night!

P.S. No, I didn't write all this in three minutes!