Hot and happening Melbourne

What heat came upon us in Melbourne. Having been a resident, at various times in my life, of Libya, Saudi Arabia and now Karachi, logic dictates I should be used to this. After all, I’ve played school football in the midday heat of Jeddah and Riyadh, apart from cricket in the summers. On summer vacations, we played tennis on outdoor courts in Karachi. Heat is the one thing I should be used to.

But as I went out for an early evening walk by the Yarra river yesterday – and it’s not a long walk from where we are – I had to turn back barely 300 metres into it. The sun is brutal here, absolutely brutal: Ashes to Ashes, dust to dust, if Lillee doesn’t get you then the sun must? It is at you all the time, with absolutely no respite, much like the best Australian fast bowlers I guess. It was the kind of day on which to exult in the very ineptness that prevented you from becoming a cricketer, for otherwise imagine playing in this heat.

In my defense, it is a dry heat and I am used to stickier, more humid conditions. And it probably wouldn’t have been such a shock to the system had it not been such a steep jump in temperature from previous days. The temperature rose 13 degrees in one day, to 38 degrees and that was at seven in the evening.

That is, of course, Melbourne. The weather changes can be as sudden as the fall of Tiger Woods. Today, for example, it has been hot again but windy, where it was absolutely still yesterday; the sea breeze of Karachi, it can never be said enough, is God’s gift to the city. Tonight, on New Year’s Eve, Melbourne awaits rain. It’ll probably snow tomorrow.

But the sun does bestow upon the city, and its many-faceted architecture, a great seaside charm. There is great casualness around, in the flip-flops, the shorts and the vests, and it creeps up on you the more time you spend in it. We spent time walking around Lygon Street, which essentially would be what we call a food street in Pakistan. There is none of the loudness of Lahore’s late, much-lamented Gawalmandi or the smells and colours. But there is worldlier cuisine and good order even if some of the restaurateurs hawk their wares in ways not so different to their Lahori counterparts.

Gawalmandi and Koh Samui’s Chaweng are perhaps bastard, mutant children of Lygon.

We’re missing Melbourne for New Year’s Eve, though Sydney is some compensation. I’ve never been the first to witness the New Year.