|The Good Life
If summer’s heat gets too much, city folk might adopt a remedy of their earthy rural cousins.
Greg Dixon
[by telegraph]
Wairarapa District, New Year’s Day, 1940
Upon my word, ’tis hot here in the Provinces. These past six months in the Wairarapa district have laid bare a most unpleasant state of affairs: the backblocks of our Dominion are afflicted by the most intemperate temperatures.
We were prepared for the wilds of winter, which can be bested by a warm hearth and lashings of strong tea. However, the summer months are proving quite extraordinarily wearisome, with many days cursed by a dry and unbending heat, a turn of events that is proving most vexing for me.
In recent weeks, the immoderate temperatures have visited such feverish humours upon me, I have feared for my sanity, and for that of my dear wife, a woman of delicate constitution and refined sensibility.
During our long familial bond, we have maintained a wholesome fellowship by engaging in a rigorous regime of cold baths and prayer in the event of feelings.
However, the Mediterranean climate that bedevils the Wairarapa district has proven a trial for us both. To my consternation, my feelings have been greatly kindled, and no amount of prayer and cold bathing appears able to dampen my febrility.
On Christmas Day, I found myself to be so kindled that I removed my hat and coat and ran into one of our estate’s fields to plunge myself into a watering trough. Madness! I dare not contemplate, what Mother would have said.
As the gentlewoman of the household, it has fallen to my dear wife to maintain propriety, pray for salvation and seek a remedy. She was uncertain whether to send for a medical doctor, a priest or an exorcist.
Our local physician, Dr SW Indler, a medical man of the old school, suggested the only cure for such a shaming situation was immediate divorce. I dare not contemplate what Father might have thought of such a suggestion. In my considered opinion, he would have shot the bounder for proffering such ungodly advice.
If divorce was out of the question, Dr Indler said, I should take the advice of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, who opined on the favourable benefits of salt water on the body, and immediately immerse myself in the sea.
In accordance with his instructions, and after many hours aboard a bullock-drawn cart, we alighted at Castlepoint, a seaside hamlet, and I immediately began the “immersion therapy”. It proved refreshing, but did nothing for my disposition.
I have instead turned to the ministry of the Very Reverend Ernest Fellow. My dear wife and I have taken great strength from his homily on the wedding at Cana, though
I was undecided on his discourses concerning the bull, the cow and the lost weekend in Babylon.
While praying with the Rev
Fellow, I have also turned my mind to the origins of my predicament.
I am no boffin, but it is my firm conviction that the Wairarapa district is positioned far too close to the sun. I shall be writing to our MP, Commodore Holden, presently on active service in the East, about what might be done to rectify the situation.
In talking to a local farmer, Horatio Aloysius King, a sterling fellow who has been making it his labour to shape us into robust Country Folk, I have learned this Province’s rustics have long recognised the causes and nature of my malady. With the wisdom of the sylvan folk, they have preserved their knowledge of this summer affliction in an old couplet that I do not fully comprehend, though readers of this esteemed periodical may unravel it. It is as follows:
Apples be ripe, nuts be brown, Petticoats up, trousers down.
On this baffling note, my dear wife and I do hope this organ’s subscribers and enthusiasts had a more tranquil Christmas than we, and we wish them a most splendid and propitious new year.
It is my firm conviction that the Wairarapa district is positioned far too close to the sun.