After Lunch

I've just finished lunch and have been looking out at a garden which, for most of this week, has been battered by a chill northerly airstream which has brought occasional snow and sleet showers to the north-northeast of Scotland. The flowers which bloomed in the encouragement of last week's brief sunshine are looking distinctly jaded and the seeds we planted in foolish optimism have, wisely, decided not to germinate.

At times like this it cheers me to look at photos of warmer places and recall how hot it was at this time of day, and what a pleasure it was after lunch - which would have included a beer or two - to find the deep shade of a veranda and, if possible, a slight draught so I could sit looking out at the view, not doing anything except enjoy the enfolding warmth and allow my mind to wander where it chose.

It's not windless. The jahazi's lateen sail is filled by the southeasterly trade wind so the little boat is batting along and will be off Bagamoyo beach in half-an-hour or less. But the wind caresses rather than cuts; it's a friendly wind, one which stirs the palm fronds of the makuti roof and muffles the never-ending scream of the crickets in the bush land behind the building.

The heat will persist until mid-afternoon, and even then will only ease slowly; and, as slowly, people will emerge and resume their business. This is not a world of air-conditioning but of people simply adapting to the climate. We, in our climate, can only sit and look out at the garden because the central heating is on. The only other way of staying warm is to go outside and find some violent exercise, like digging one of the vegetable beds.

I would dearly love to be back living under the trade winds, adapting to their regime, accepting that less gets done in a day simply because, for much of it, it's too hot. And schooling myself in the art of doing nothing for the hour or so after lunch, nothing except to allow my mind to roam free.