Out in the midday sun by David Holman-Hill Waters

 

Out in the midday sun…

I am sat at a table on the veranda of our Turkish apartment, staring uncomprehendingly at the screen of my laptop. Today is tropically hot, heavily humid and unbearably sticky, over fifty five degrees in the shade and not a whisper of a breeze. Sweat emanating from my forearms trickles down the backs of my hands swamping my typing digits. Oy#a hidr obwf… Ah, keys all wet, both typing digits now skating over keys like Bambi on ice. Blot sweat from digits and keys, try again. Digits continue to squelch, squeak and slide wildly over weeny slippery puddled keys.

Digit’s accuracy these days, even without slippery keys, wonky at best, as arthritic warped knuckles cause digits to take on accuracy, or rather, inaccuracy of their own; aim digit at f, g appears on screen, stab e, likelihood w, r, s or d will be result. Age, eyesight and arthritis, all now taking their toll, unless of course this all the result of ‘velly clewah orweental prot’ by fiendish saffron fingered installers of laptop keys aimed at ‘unnerminin’ lexicon o’ Ingliss lanwej’.

Forearms trickle perspiration wetly once again. What needed here is dusky handmaiden, all seductive beaming smiles gently wafting cooling palm leaf, attentively mopping forehead and bringing soothing cold drik – drik… hello, wonky fingers now not just missing correct keys, but started missing out whole letters too. Umm… In absence of smiling dusky handmaid, make executive decision: adjourn to kitchen, fetch own cold ‘drik’.

Icebox, look like Antarctica, not been defrosted; dig ice cubes out of icebox with bread knife, add cubes to cooling drink. Wipe blood off bred

knife and bind bleeding finger. In the kitchen’s heat, condensation now coats the outside of the cold glass; glass, like digits, swimming in wetness; condensation now running down glass in rivulets. Carefully clutching wet glass, return to seat, seat similar, shirt, wet, sticking to back of seat. Carefully place dripping glass on table; glass now standing in teeny puddle of its own.

Shirt not only thing stuck; pre kitchen finely honed next sentence gone awol, no idea what… what it was…

Across the street a yellow dog appears, and pads slowly past, tongue lolling, heading for the shade of an overhanging tree; abstractedly I watch its progress; arriving it flops down gratefully on its side. From deep inside the interior of the apartment opposite an infant, hot and irritable, begins to screech and wail out loud… ‘Mad dogs and Englishmen’… well Turkish infants…Ah! Memory jogged, that was it, heat and humidity.

In the oppressive swelter it is not only the dog that is finding the day exhausting. Everything seems exhausted by the heat and humidity. In the sun’s full glare, hoverflies, normally zipping by like Biggles, seek out a shady leaf, land and rest, listlessly. A butterfly, softly fluttering, pitches up momentarily on a dried paint drip on the balcony’s balustrade mistaking its bright orange hue for a flower; disappointed it flutters off, slowly and daintily weaving its way. All effort is reduced to the minimum; all bakes beneath the noon day welkin.

Hell’s teeth... Fly just plummeted into freshly replenished drink. Shot past like fuzzy blue Exocet smack into far side of glass and plop, straight into drink. Make closer inspection… no ordinary Fly this; this Fly ‘built’, this Fly pump iron. This fly look like the Arnold Schwarzenegger of flies.

Fly legs now going like the clappers whizzing it round glass. Glass tall, biro won’t reach Fly to fish Fly out. Good job drink non alcoholic, Fly would have major hangover by the time I’ve…

Begin to wonder, how long, if drink alcoholic, it take before Fly start hiccups and telling all in glass it “really loves them”? Given size of Fly, Fly more likely ask “what they think they lookin’ at and request they step outside”. All depends one supposes on strength of grog; depend too on size and constitution of Fly.

Pumped Fly now trying to mount ice cube; ice cube rotates in time with Fly efforts. Watch Fly’s attempts with curious interest; decide eventually charitable thing to do is to empty glass.

Tip drink, ice cubes and Fly onto garden below balcony. Fly and contents now just been dropped eight feet; suspect this likely Fly equivalent of human dropping off Niagara during winter ice flow; no wonder Fly now on back, thrashing about in ice shards. Watch for moment or two; interest wanes; leave Fly to Fly fate; return to kitchen for clean glass and replenished drink.

On return, check on Fly. Fly now staggering, still soggy but right way up; tiny Fly lungs no doubt been working overtime coughing up inhaled Niagara. Fly legs still wayward and unsteady, obviously still awaiting instructions from weeny concussed Fly brain. Fly brain however, currently far too occupied trying to desperately clear Fly head, get Fly world back in focus, work out what the hell been happening to Fly for past five minutes, to pass any instructions to Fly legs.

I return to the keyboard… concentrate… where was I, pre Fly in drink…

Concentration now interrupted by mini buzz saw emanating from garden in direction of deposited soggy Fly. Peer over balcony. Fly no longer soggy, Fly just damp. Buzz saw is Fly attempting to get airborne. Attempts at take-off however hampered by Fly co-ordination not being what it had been ten minutes ago. Fly wings and legs now all furiously clattering into one another, hence mini buzz saw.

These exertions however have not only been observed by me. From the shady undergrowth a Spider emerges and eyes Fly, makes dart toward the Fly stopping abruptly some six or seven inches from it. Spider, no doubt licking Spider lips. Fly as big as Spider but no matter, this Spider of Olympian pedigree; this long jump specialist for Spider, with one heroic leap clears the six or seven inch gap and lands on the still grounded Fly. The buzzing ceases momentarily then resumes, wings and legs flailing. Like a miniature drunken octopus Fly and Spider roll around first one on top then the other; accompanied by frantic buzzing. A titanic battle ensues; gradually however the effects of concussion, Niagara, heat and Spider venom take their toll on the Fly and the buzzsaw stops. The Spider, exhausted in victory, squats over its new larder guarding it warily.

But nature is a fickle mistress and one to whom we are all eventually going to fall foul. Yet again I have not been the only observer of this epic struggle. Our resident Gecko has also been attracted by the commotion and both Fly and Spider are now lunch.

The Gecko, temporarily sated, returns to the isolation of its hiding place in the cool beneath the bushes. The yellow dog, revived or bored, has moved on. The infant in the apartment opposite has given up its wailing, exhausted. Nothing stirs. Not an insect, not a leaf. Heat hangs heavy and silent.

Alone again and no longer distracted, I return once more to the keyboard. Where was I? It seems I’d started a new paragraph and I stare bemusedly at the screen. ‘Wcoinf ilom….’ I stare at keyboard; keyboard stares back, gleaming moistly; I look back at the screen, ‘Wcoinf ilom….’ definitely. I look at the keys surrounding the typed letters in the vague hope of finding some anagrammatic clue as to origin of thought and sentence. No clue emerges. Sweat trickles.

Mind wanders once again… where handmaiden when you need her, where gently wafting palm? Where Fly free cold drink gone? ‘Wcoinf ilom….’ Shake head. Might just as well be Nipponese and, for all I know, is. Resign myself to the fact that, in this heat, what ever it was I was going to write is now unlikely to be written.

Hunger pangs begin to outweigh literary ambition; make second executive decision of day, in absence of dusky handmaid baring sustaining morsels and refreshing tinctures, it’s time to return to kitchen and, with bloodied bandaged digit, cobble together own lymvch.