Cape Town, My City.

We’ve been having some seriously odd weather in Cape Town lately. A lot of Cape Town property has been damaged, most roads have been flooded, and us laid-back Capetonians are shivering in our Wellington boots. I posted recently on an international forum, complaining about the temperatures here on the southern tip of the continent.

“My word!” I said, “It’s 15 degrees! I’m absolutely freezing, I’m sure there must be some snow on the Ceres mountains by now”. To which the reply was, most indignantly, “15 degrees? Celsius? You have no right to complain! That’s as warm as our summer!”

Granted, the said reply poster is living in the north of England at the moment, in itself a carp-worthy claim, but there is one factor which my fellow forum stalkers do not realise. This past summer (and summer in South Africa contains the months of November to April) saw temperatures reaching 42 degrees. Celsius. Do you know what that temperature feels like? Well, unless you spend much of your time in the desert or in various Middle Eastern countries, I doubt it. One’s body temperature is roughly 35 degrees Celsius, which made the air temperature outside a full 7 degrees warmer than the air one breathes out.

There’s a name for that feeling. It’s called freaking weird. Breathing in air which is warmer than the air you breathe out when you’re not stood in front of say, an oven or a jet engine, is a bit strange.

So, dropping from 42 degrees Celsius to 15 in a month or two kind of took the wind out of my sails. So please, when you’re on your Cape Town holiday basking in the warm winter sun, cut me some slack for dressing up in five layers, scarf, beanie, jersey, and thick vest.