Sweaty Betty

Muggy today.

I hate muggy weather. I'm a bit of a sweater, you see. I always have been. It's not actually related to the fact I'm a bit fat these days - I sweated just as much when I was a lithe teenager. I'll never forget the sheer hell of first hitting the brick wall of 90% humidity when stepping off the plane to spend the summer of 1997 in Hong Kong. In that insanely close weather, I was having to step into a cold shower just to dry myself off 3 or 4 times a day.

I've always considered it an arse of a condition to be honest. If you are fortunate enough to not be much of a sweater, then thank your lucky stars. For you, a hot, muggy day is probably heaven - the chance to soak up some rays, sit out in that heat and sip pina coladas. You swines.

For the Sweaty minority however, it's hellish. Waking up on a close, humid day is always depressing for me, soon realising I'm going to have a shirt saturated in my salty excreta within mins of leaving home, then having to spend the rest of the working day with sticky, clammy clothes hugging me like a second skin.

This probably repulses you, and frankly you'd be right to be repulsed, as it is pretty repulsive. It's also a damn inconvenience to me. By the time I get home from work I just want to rip off my clothes, stand in an ice-cold shower at last feeling free of my clingy, sopping shirt and trousers with a decidedly musty gusset - flinging said items haphazardly around the flat as I prance around naked for the rest of the evening.

This always brings consternation from MrsOx, especially if her parents have popped over for dinner.

There is an answer of course - Air Conditioning. Despite almost drying up from lost salts in the humid climates of Asia, pretty much any indoor environment in the developed Far-East caters to the sweaties by blowing cool, clean air onto the streets to entice you inside. None of that here in the UK. I know it's often only Two weeks of the year we have to worry about it, but frankly that Two weeks is enough to drive a sweaty crazy with humidity-induced mania.

The UK isn't even set up to provide easy access to foods and drinks that might alleviate the nuisance of the heat a little. In Japan, you are never 2 feet away from a vending machine serving Ice-Tea, Ice-Lattes and all manner of Icey-Ice Iced loveliness. In America, a dash into any 7-11 will bring you the chance to make your own personalised frozen slushee, nom nom nom.

Japan: Vending Heaven

This morning though in rubbish old Britain, parched and desperate for something cool, icy and refreshing on arrival at the train station, I found the over-priced cafe there could provide me with luke-warm colas and hot, stodgy sausage rolls only.

Disappointing.

Anyway, I seem to have gone off on a tangent from my sweaty news to a 'What's Wrong with Broken Britain' feature. I didn't mean to do that.