THE last few February days are now mild enough to leave the door open.
It lets the breeze blow right through the kitchen, over me and the laptop and out the window as it heads north to bring a bit of southern comfort to the desert.
Indeed it has even been cool enough to have put the legs away and pulled on long trousers for work outside today. There's a feeling about the place that we have survived yet another summer and without undue calamity. In short we are relieved.
But then again strange things happen. There's yet time for something wicked to churn up a filthy heat and dangerous winds. Perth was 41C a couple of days ago after all. Years back, our teacher in Grade 4 read out a chapter or so of a book based around a bushfire. I can't recall what happened but its title was February Dragon.
Coupled with my birthday falling in this hottest month it has always seemed a powerful and prescient title.
But rather than an inferno it was a cold snap a few Februarys ago that comes back to mind as I enjoy tonight's cool breeze and its promise of autumn.
It must have been the day before pony club. I am by nature a miserable bastard and have always selfishly resented having to bustle about to facilitate other peoples' recreational fetishes, even my own children's. "If you want to ride horses ride horses!" I rant, "Why does it require a bloody club!"
Anyway, it involved borrowing a horse float from a farmer down the road. He used it, far more productively, to cart gear around from block to block.
As I opened the gate to the paddock where the float had come to rest a weirdly cold wind blew into my face. It had, after all, been sweaty-hot the previous day and now I was pulling my collar up and feeling a little sorry for a few hundred freshly shorn lambs.
The drop of about 20C and loss of jumper must have been pretty miserable for them. Walking round to lift the ramp of the float I found a little mob had voluntarily loaded themselves in to escape the wind. I shooed them out, a bit guiltily but not as guiltily as I should have as it turned out.
The night grew worse and a freezing sleet blew up and killed those naked lambs by the dozen. Who could have guessed it in February?
