Barry Lee Thompson

The wind whips, scrapes boxes and wrappers across the pavement and into the air, thrashes the treetops. It’s going to be hotter than it’s been for months, they say. Oppressively hot and windy, say the forecasters. You can tell they’ll be right this time, that things will turn out exactly the way they’ve said. It’s in the light, heavy and bothersome, a pain of brightness, and in the haze of dust swirling over the rooftops.

His neighbour Serena is a bit of a weather reporter. There’s hot, she says, and there’s hot and gusty. ‘What?’ Gusty, she repeats. Like a sirocco – watch yourself. Then she’s off, back indoors, nodding and pursing her lips sagely. Serena’s got a right to nod and purse, she usually knows about these things.

What about that dust, though. It gets everywhere, coats everything. It causes a sensation at the back of his nose. Not pain, not exactly, but discomfort. A small complaint, he never mentions it because maybe it’s the same for everyone. Maybe everyone feels the discomfort.

He’d like to visit a beach on days like these, and lie in the hot wind, slathered in sunscreen, thick like cold cream, and on these days there’s no one else at the beach apart from the man from the empty car yard who comes to scream at the gulls and the waves. But they wouldn’t bother him. They’d keep a civilised distance, let him strip and bake in the storm of sand and say nothing to bother him. He knows this. He wishes for that beach.