OEDEMA, SPATTER VEINS, AND A CUP OF TEA

By eleven o'clock I realized that the weather man was full of horse feathers, and probably a witch, who needed to be burned on top of faggots at the stake. But it was already too hot to do that. Maybe tomorrow. Per the report today was supposed to be ten degrees cooler. Yeah, no, that did not happen. Parts of the city went well over a hundred, and in my neck of the woods it was climbing past ninety. So I went out to lunch. And did nothing else.
Normally I get all my errands done on Wednesday.

Plus I feel nauseous from the heat.


But I was home in time for tea, which as everyone knows is the time between after three o'clock and five, more or less. Milk, sugar, and in a nod to climate change an icecube.

Two cups.

I am, naturally, thinking of parts of the world where it rains and is cool at this time of year. Amsterdam, Eindhoven, 's Gravenhage, 's Hertogenbosch, Tilburg, Utrecht.
You know, where the modern age began.

Imagine sitting under a cafe awning after a late supper enjoying the final smoke of the day (a nice English flake) in a smaller sized Charatan, or group three or four Dunhill, with a cup of tea, while looking out over the park where resistance members were shot during the war. Ah, the good old days. When we still owned Bali, Celebes, Java, Sumatra, and the Moluccas. When Capstan Flake was still made by W.D. & H.O. Wills, and smoked by noted poofy snootwads like Tolkien.

Perhaps we should have left The Dutch East Indies far sooner than we did. Let the locals declare independence, repatriate all the POW's and our educated bureaucrats, doctors, and engineers, and pension off the native soldiers. It would have created much better blood and a more acceptable transition on both sides. Let's face it; all we really needed was the recipe books, and basically that's all we have now.

We would have been so far ahead of the British in edible post-war food that it would have made your head spin, years before they stopped eating baked beans out of a can, tinned meat, and margarine.


What, they're still doing that over there?
Dudes, the Blitz is over.
We won.



Oedema and vericosity ("spat aderen") are the two curses one's lower extremities may suffer with poor circulation and high blood pressure. Especially during heat waves.
Which is why the weatherman deserves to snuff it.
It's his fault.


Terlalu panes sekali, hari ini.




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