Adelaide, still
More things about Adelaide that I'd forgotten:
Things about London that never seemed quite right, and for which Adelaide provides me with the obviously correct alternative:
A thing about Adelaide that I don't think I'd noticed properly:
It is really hot and dry here. And this isn't a brief aberration during summer; it's constant, lurking, even when it rains.
Which I did know, of course! South Australia is the "dryest state in the dryest continent", as small Adelaidean children are constantly reminded whenever they leave a tap on. But I didn't notice, I think, what that means about how people relate to their environment.
Everyone is surprisingly aware of the approaching weather; it doesn't hurt that the four-day forecast is pretty much accurate, instead of England's zany work of near-future speculative fiction. Meetings are planned around the very hot days (43 celsius, last Thursday). People with gardens, which is to say most people, seem to know what time the sun sets, because you're only allowed to water between sunset and sunrise. Sprinklers are forbidden at any time. Since I left, a new fire alert system has come into place, with three levels of fire warning: these are Severe, Extreme, and Catastrophic.
This is why, of course, I find it so alarming that in London you're allowed to buy fireworks, at will, just like that. I assume, at some level, that I am still in the Adelaide Hills and things could suddenly burn down at any time, that all schoolchildren are drilled on what to do in case of a bushfire (as far as I can remember, it's "hang blankets on windows, put buckets of water behind the blankets, hide under tables", but it's been a while, so if a bushfire comes to Battersea don't rely on me to know what to do).
- Hard rubbish week - the special week when garbage trucks will pick up sofas and bookshelves and tree-branches and broken-spring folding beds and what-have-you. Within a few minutes walk of where I am now, I could pick up an artist's palette on wheels or any one of three different basketball hoops. (It's a rare piece of hard rubbish that makes it to the rubbish truck; anything halfway useable gets thrown into the back of a passing car.)
- Jacaranda trees, which are astonishing: gnarled angry-looking bare trees line whole roads and then pop out thousands of purple flowers overnight, all startling and visible from the air; and then a week later the flowers fall off and the footpaths are caked with the things for two or three very bright days. For most of the rest of the year the trees just look irritable and shed big awkward seed-pods, so good timing on the visit, me.
- Visible horizons.
- Fruchocs.
- The reason I automatically withdraw £40, £80 or £110 from ATMs rather than £50 or £100: Australian ATMs stock 20s and 50s, so it's important to withdraw an amount that guarantees you some useful 20s instead of just awkwardly-large 50s.
Things about London that never seemed quite right, and for which Adelaide provides me with the obviously correct alternative:
- Tile-roofed houses are just a bit too quaint and storybook; corrugated iron is correct.
- London birds twitter and sing, but birds should squawk and trill and make creaky, cross plumbing noises, and swoop more, and go skwaaark or brrrrip-brrrrip a lot.
A thing about Adelaide that I don't think I'd noticed properly:
It is really hot and dry here. And this isn't a brief aberration during summer; it's constant, lurking, even when it rains.
Which I did know, of course! South Australia is the "dryest state in the dryest continent", as small Adelaidean children are constantly reminded whenever they leave a tap on. But I didn't notice, I think, what that means about how people relate to their environment.
Everyone is surprisingly aware of the approaching weather; it doesn't hurt that the four-day forecast is pretty much accurate, instead of England's zany work of near-future speculative fiction. Meetings are planned around the very hot days (43 celsius, last Thursday). People with gardens, which is to say most people, seem to know what time the sun sets, because you're only allowed to water between sunset and sunrise. Sprinklers are forbidden at any time. Since I left, a new fire alert system has come into place, with three levels of fire warning: these are Severe, Extreme, and Catastrophic.
This is why, of course, I find it so alarming that in London you're allowed to buy fireworks, at will, just like that. I assume, at some level, that I am still in the Adelaide Hills and things could suddenly burn down at any time, that all schoolchildren are drilled on what to do in case of a bushfire (as far as I can remember, it's "hang blankets on windows, put buckets of water behind the blankets, hide under tables", but it's been a while, so if a bushfire comes to Battersea don't rely on me to know what to do).