TO DESCRIBE the weather we’ve been having as “hot”, is like describing Julia Roberts or Charlize Theron as “a bit of alright” or “not bad looking”. But then, what word do you use to describe the heat we’ve been having?
What word describes waking up with the pillow behind you neck damp with sweat, with limp and rumpled sheets, having sweaty armpits AFTER your shower, getting into a car with the steering wheel too hot to handle? And then it gets hotter.
So I grabbed my old thesaurus, which illustrates that in English we are spoiled for a choice of words – sunny, torrid, tropical, close (my granny always used to describe hot weather as “close”), sultry, estival… estival? Now that’s a word I don’t know – estival.
Turns out that estival (also and more properly spelt aestival – the Americans leave off the “a”) means “of or relating to summer”, was first used in English in the 14th century and comes, via French, from the Latin aestas meaning summer. But I dunno, if I walked into the Spoeg & Spittle at the end of another scorching day, with the intention of replacing lost body fluids by way of a couple of small Hansas, and said, “Stone me, it’s been another aestival day!”, I imagine the lads would think I had sunstroke.
One interesting thing about the word is that it has a verb – estivate or aestivate, which, when applied to animals, means that they pass the summer (or dry season) in a dormant condition, they aestivate, which would make it the opposite of hibernate, I suppose. Some vertebrates and invertebrates are known to aestivate, and my mother-in-law could probably be described as aestivating.
Other words meaning hot are stifling, suffocating, blistering, sweltering, searing, canicular… eh? canicular? that’s another word I am not familiar with. Let’s see…
Canicular refers to the northern hemisphere’s “dog days” (dog = canine, get it?), the hottest part of the summer up there being July/August. As I understand it, and I’m not sure I do, the Romans (and the Greeks before them, and the Egyptians before them) back in the day, called the star Sirius the “Dog Star”, it being the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, and in them days, my child, in summer the star rose at the same as the sun, and they attributed the heat of summer to this ol’ Dog Star.
If you were a red dog wandering around the streets of ancient Rome, you had to pasop because the Romans used to sacrifice a red dog “to appease the rage of Sirius, believing that the star was the cause of the hot, sultry weather”.
And again, if I popped into the Spoeg & Spittle, and someone said, “Stone me”, or words to that effect, “it’s been a bit canicular today, hey?” I wouldn’t, until now, know what he was talking about.
All of which has no real relevance to us here perched at the bottom of Africa in the 21st century. Although, you see dogs in summer with their tongues lolling out, and the way they flop onto cool cement on the verandah, to get as much of their body as possible in contact with the cement, is the way this heat makes us humans feel. We want to flop onto something cool, and cool cement, yeah, that actually sounds quite nice.
Otherwise, you really cannot totally escape it. During the day I’m told that one should wear light-coloured, lightweight cotton clothes. Synthetic fibres trap heat and don’t as readily absorb sweat, the evaporation of which cools you slightly. Tough luck if you happen to be appearing, for whatever reason, in court when the magistrate might look askance at you rocking up in cotton shorts, a Hawaiian cotton shirt and in fact looking like a wannabe Magnum PI.
At night what can you do if you haven’t a fan or an air conditioner, or perhaps you have an air conditioner but you can’t afford the electricity required to run it, what to do? I’ve heard it suggested that you stick your bed sheets in a plastic bag and shove them in the fridge for a couple of hours. That means you’ll have to make your bed just before climbing into it, and making beds involves waving your arms in the air and stooping to tuck things in, so why bother? I find making beds exhausting.
Don’t eat large meals, I’ve heard, because then your body creates more metabolic heat in breaking down the food. And they do say that mind over matter works. They say that if sit back, or lie back I suppose, close your eyes and imagine snow, imagine the bleeding Antarctic wastes and penguins standing in a freezing blizzard, they do say that research has shown that the penguins feel a lot warmer… no hold on, they say that your old body’s overall temperature will fall in reaction to these chilly daydreams.
And think of this: in four months time we’ll be moaning about the cold.
