Long hot summer night

Tonight I have discovered a new place to sit. Sleepless in the heat of Melbourne summer, I have been tossing and twisting until now, at 1.35 am, when I can feel — finally! — the breeze of the promised cool change. The sound of overweight raindrops has reached my night-time-alert ears. Anxious to take a breath of this welcome coolness, I have hurried to my window
and flung it open (read: very slowly and quietly inched up the old, creaking pane). Here is a ready made seat — albeit a somewhat uneven, uncomfortable one — and a breeze, a view of a still lightly trafficked street, and the glow of the diffuse orange streetlights by which to read. The rain provides its ever-comforting spatter patter on the streets and roofs and the wide, green leaves of the tree outside our house. Its scent — dampened foliage — is light on the air.

Project for tomorrow: fashion a window seat for prolonged summer night perching. The old cushion that’s been languishing in the back garden, a plastic bag (for the damp!), and an Ikea pillowcase should work a treat.