The Big Loo

Well I've experienced a vast change in the weather during my stay here. The heat is the obvious big change. It's steadily rising and will continue to do so until May-June. The Heat also creates the most wonderful Storms. The skies are often lit up with a a colourful montage of lightning bolts, arcing across the horizon.

Another phenomenon that has recently arisen is the wind that now blows across the city. This wind is like no other that I have ever experienced. In normal heat the wind often acts as a respite from the heat. This type of wind however only increases that. It is locally called 'Loo' and the wind is not only hot, but burning. This coupled with the dust storms that are created created,akin to what I think it would be like living in a desert!!!!

It does not make you sweat as normal, but rather dehydrates your whole body. You can feel it sapping away the moisture from your skin. My daily consumption of water has increased and I regularly drink up to 8-10 pints of water.

I thought one of my favourite poets Ted Hughes summed up the power of wind. I hope you enjoy it?

Wind - Ted Hughes

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up --
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.