Tropical midnight

Days 31 & 32: smidgins of joy

Fluff articles in the Portuguese press always bring with them smidgins of joy.

I love the online Portuguese newspaper I subscribe to. It has large fonts, so I can absorb information while slouching in my worn-out executive chair bolstered with cushions that suffer unremitting pressure from half my posterior. Other bits of my posterior (feet and calves) are propped up by a cushioned chair I refurbished last year.

Design is everything, I tell you: All this effective cushioning is made possible the desk designed to my measurements. It turns out that is is perfect for me whether I am sitting up straight, or lazing about while hoovering up info in Portuguese.

Which brings me to the fluff articles. We have them every summer, and they pass for news. I bet if I search any newspaper for articles posted exactly a year ago that I could find an almost verbatim article telling me by how many more degrees Celsius the temperature will rise in the next few days.

This year, though, there’s a creative spirit at work in the Met Office claiming that the extra heat is going to bring with it “tropical nights”.

What nonsense! It is not nearly humid enough to count as tropical! I wish the article had said “equatorial nights”, because then I could imagine myself drinking fresh pineapple juice in a hammock in Ghana. I say imagine, and not remember, because I never lay in a hammock in Ghana, but I made sure lots of ice-cold pineapple juice came my way.

I remember with fondness my time spent in a hammock in the sub-tropical climate of Brisbane about five years ago. My lovely sister would bring me ice cream on occasion, which warranted tossing any reading matter to the floor to devote full attention to the matter at hand.

One other light article that grabbed my attention in the Portuguese press involves minimalist seating on an electric bicycle made from recycled coffee capsules (a picture and video await you if you follow the link). A Swiss company teamed up with Nespresso on this noble project.

For EUR 1,290 (gosh, that’s a lot of coffee capsules) you can purchase and ride one of these newfangled contraptions – or buy at least three very fancy hammocks in Portugal. Or drink instant coffee while stretched out on your own eclectic assemblage of furniture while you wait for the night to be less tropical, and cool enough to retire for the night.

The smidgins of joy in the latter scenario come from a modest purchase of biscuits, the perfect reading aid late on a tropical night. Moon’s on the wane, by the way, so no reason for this screed other than those two words sticking in my head all day.

©2019 Allison Wright