Summer In The City

This year's May ultimately unmasks last year's August as the deceptive and shamelessly lying crook it turned out to be.

While the ones' name promised joys of summer, making merry in the greenest of meadows and frolicking in the sun, it let the heavens pour at leisure instead, sucking all the colour from the sky, crowning weary mountain tops with unwanted caps of snow, reintroducing cardigans to an audience dying for the tiniest leftovers from a memory of warm and sunlit childhood summer afternoons.

The other - proud, loud and self-assured in the glistening sunlight - is far ahead of its time, blinds you with over-exposed imagery, belies its ancestral place and mocks the changing of the seasons with its overheated temperament, wanting to be top dog in a summer yet to come.

I look down on crooked rooftops as they simmer in the brightly burning afternoon sun. The heat parades triumphantly through streets, leans on terraces, lingers on squares, and invades the most private, hidden corners of the city.

Dehydrated tourists stagger aimlessly through winding cobblestone alleys like drugged lab rats through a maze. Water spills from a bottle and evaporates before it hits the ground. Steve McQueen completely loses his cool. A pigeon lights up like a match as it lands on the hot tin roof. I scatter its ashes across the concrete below, while a premature summer laughs in the rotting face of winter's corpse.

"Shadows Grew Into Giants And Died As The Sun Burned Orange And Sank."

It is the only sentence taking root in the mind. The rest is blurry, out of focus, as both brain and eyes are distracted far too easily from the excellence that is the text they should adore:

The ant that scuttles along the farthest corner of the eye. The wave of cheerful laughter wafting over from the Bistro across the street. The young, stout, arse-wiggling girl with the overblown makeup of a parisian drag-queen. The roaring noise of passing cars that always seem to come in threes. The brief moments of silence in between it all.

I take a sip from my cup of coffee. It has been sitting in the glaring sunlight for almost half an hour. It is nearly cold. A mosquito sits on the saucer. It flaps its wings, feeling its way on the unfamiliar surface like a blind man, slipping, falling, landing on its back, struggling back on its feet, performing the strangest dance on its porcelain stage.

A cyclist approaches and gracefully parks his bike alongside the hedge that borders the beergarden. The way he flounces across to the tables exposes him as the show-off he is. He takes a seat at the table next to mine. In his attire he looks like a member of a SWAT team, a fireman from a future where they don't read books anymore, but burn them instead. I firmly hold on to my novel, as for a split-second I expect him to produce a flamethrower. It turns out to be just a lighter. As if to belie his outfit and his athletic build he orders a pint and lights up a fag.

The cyclist uninvitedly introduces himself as Heinz and throws sentences over to my table. I smile and nod occasionally, resort to the briefest possible replies, while still trying to read. It is in vein, as the verbal bombardment increases.

While still trying to remain polite I decide I've had enough. I look at the sky, then at my watch, and pretend to realise how late it has become. Swiftly I drink up and pay.

I apologise to my newfound, unintended friend and make an exit, as shadows grow into giants and die, as the sun burns orange and sinks.