Running inside my head

We meet, two strangers or distant acquaintances, friends of friends or even more remote, and try to start our conversation. It's not so easy, and we struggle to look one another in the eye and enquire about the inner, meaningful bits and pieces that together constitute our lives. A sense of uneasiness and restraint holds us at a distance, each feeling the edge of our own personal space encroached upon as we scramble for words to make the connection between two minds not hostile but not quite ready to take the plunge, like the first summer dip into a still-icy swimming pool.

So we talk about the weather. We soon agree that the icy chill that rolled the cloud into town from the north today was unseasonable and quite unexpected. What was this cold front doing to upset winter-long dreams of lazy suntan days on the beach, mountain walks, picnics outdoors and family braaivleis rituals? Where was the familiar blast of the afternoon south east gale to remove the smog and dust and asthma-inducing clouds of spring pollen out to sea? And does that look like a weekend of rain ahead? Channel e says we can expect an 80% chance of rain and a minimum temperature of 16 on Saturday but the web forecasts more wind, less rain, lots of cloud and a temperature of up to 19 tomorrow. Who do we believe?

And this room for disagreement on the forecast, and firm agreement between strangers that no TV weatherman ever seems to get it right, is a life belt tossed into this perennial conversational abyss to rescue strained first encounters from social collapse.

In addition, I now know what weather to expect when we hit the trail tomorrow before dawn. And you can too if you click the Links.