BI-HEMISPHERICAL MAN
As a bi-hemispherical man, born in the north and matured in
the south, I am very conscious of the changing of the seasons, especially at
autumn and spring, when the best of Melbourne’s weather comes into its own.
This morning, I enjoyed the additional hour, courtesy of
our putting back the clocks but not nearly as much as I did on bitter, dark, Mancunian
mornings when, as a newspaper boy, I could roll over and luxuriate in my warm
bed, staving off the necessity of braving bitter weather to meet the good
citizens’ of Miles Platting’s Sunday morning appetite for the salacious News (“screws”)
of the World.
More so than in Sydney, Melbourne’s proliferation of
ancient deciduous trees achieve a semblance of the golden Autumns of England
and how I remember those crystal-sharp, sunny mornings in the early seventies
(when I came to live here) redolent of the sweet smoke of burning leaves at
street corners and echoing to the wail of football ground sirens.
But nothing can match the English Spring. Winter roadside
copses and hedge rows, strewn with motorists litter, looking much like the
wounded aftermath of First war battles, transform overnight, into bright green festivals
of foliage and flowers.
We humans are tuned to these changes and although not as
consciously as our forebears, our moods swing, rise and fall to the rhythms of
the changing landscape and weather. But when one switches hemispheres, emotional
confusion is brought on-when, in March in Melbourne, my body wants to dance the
rites of spring, confounded and confused by the darkening days and cooling
nights. The sea is too cold to swim in and raincoats and sweaters awake from
their hibernation home. In England in autumn, one mourns the passing of the
light and the shortening of days, taunted by TV news of lifesaving rescues on
Australia’s sun-bleached beaches.
But if variety is truly the spice of life, we enjoy it in
abundance in this jewel city of the south.
