All sorts of signs mark the change of the seasons around the world. Crisp orange leaves falling from the trees mean it’s autumn in London. The first balmy days of the year when you can have breakfast outdoors in Paris is a sure sign spring has arrived. As for New York, I guess a new line of Starbucks syrups or something means it’s winter.
Summer in Abu Dhabi? I know it’s here when just spending 30 seconds outdoors turns me from a mild-mannered picture of serenity into a frothing ball of searing fury.
It’s the heat. Anything over 45 degrees cooks the easy-going part of my brain and brings it swiftly to boiling point, meaning I don’t just feel too hot, but also furiously angry at absolutely nothing at all. If a restaurant is not precisely where I thought it would be, I’d consider torching the place in hot-blooded revenge simply for the crime of being a few doors down. Someone jumps the taxi queue? I’d rather throw myself in front of the car than let them get away with it. I call it heat rage, but be warned, my condition isn’t always obvious to the casual observer – the signs that I’m in the throes of it are very similar to the signs that I’m just a little too warm. My eyes are screwed up, my face goes dark red, veins pulse in my temples, and my arms flail wildly about – people think I’m hailing a taxi, but actually I’m just taken over by irrational, uncontrollable rage.
When this happens, I know that summer – real summer – is here again, and so for meteorological purposes, I feel duty-bound to tell you the sign finally came this weekend when I was out pounding the city’s backstreets at midday. I was trying to track down a secret Russian restaurant I’d heard rumours of, for our Hidden Abu Dhabi story (see page 8), and boy was this place hidden. After a few moments out in out in the sun my heart was pounding and my T-shirt soaked through. Needless to say I was also extremely angry. Angry at myself for having cheerfully told the taxi driver to drop me off at the corner, at him for following my instructions, at the steaming nearby bins for smelling so bad, and extra, extra, mad at Google because their map said the restaurant was somewhere it wasn’t. When I finally crashed through the door of the Russian Kitchen House Cafeteria I was barely coherent, panting and raving wildly about holding Eric Schmidt’s head down in a bucket of scalding beetroot borscht to teach him a lesson.
I don’t know why the heat makes me lose my rag so quickly, but I bet it’s not just me it happens to. So we’re going to have to find a way to get through the hottest season without turning Abu Dhabi into a warzone. I’d suggest cranking up the A/C, investing in a stack of DVDs and bunking down in a form of inverse hibernation. And how will you know when autumn’s here again? You can drag me out of my lair and poke me with a stick. And if I don’t growl at you, summer’s well and truly over. It’s really that scientific.
