Sweating like a pregnant nun...

Summer has hit Zurich like a cop hits hippies at the May Day riots. With full force and near total approval of the general public. It seems to have been in or close to the 30's for a fortnight now, punctuated occasionally by storms of an intensity that I'd never seen in the UK. Storms in Zurich, rolling down off the goddamn Alps and streaming through the valley into town, are the abusive uncle of the storms you see in the UK, bigger, badder and capable of becoming violent without any warning, leaving you hiding under your bed, screaming that you couldn’t possibly take another beating.

Working by the lake has immediate benefits in that we’ve taken to spending our lunch breaks swimming, sunbathing and general frolicking in the ridiculously clear water, under the mountains, like idyllic Enid Blyton children before the advent of postmodern cynicism made such things seem homo-erotic and sinister. And now that I am engaged I’m happy to report that I no longer even notice the local college girls sunbathing topless. I swear to god they didn’t make tits that big when I was that young though. My guess is that when our generation reaches old age, we will talk less about how easy our grandkids have it with technology, what with their flying hover boards and automatic anus cleaning toilets, but instead will focus our bitterness on how our 16 year old Grandsons are dating girls with chests you could launch aircraft off.

There are some note worthy differences between the UK and Switzerland when it comes to summer and the weather in general. Most psychologically haunting is the eye-ball melting tendency of European men, in even the slightest bit of sunshine, to reach immediately for the Speedos, or in some cases that remain irrevocably damaging, thongs. Another thing I’ve noticed is that three days of sunshine doesn’t seem to constitute front page news over here. It’s not that the Swiss press won’t find other excuses to show hot girls in little clothing, like the English press does in instances of hot weather or the annual A-level results day, but they have clearly leapt to the outrageous conclusion that people do not need to be informed about how sunny it is when they could peel their wart-ridden arses off the sofa and take a look in the vague direction of the sky.

Perhaps the best element of the summer is being able to cycle into work, alongside the lake, laughing like a mad man all the way as I think of my friends struggling workwards as their faces are consumed by the sweaty flesh rolls of a fat man’s pungent armpit on the northern line of the tube. It’s a well known fact that it is illegal to transport cattle at the temperatures the London underground reaches on a hot day. Less known is the fact that the people who charge thousands and thousands of pounds for the right to use the abomination of a transport system, can’t blink or stand still for even a fraction of a second, for fear that the momentary pause would allow them to reflect on the inherent evilness of their existence and cause them to go instantly insane.

It’s not to say cycling into work is without its problems. Twice I have been stopped by the Swiss Gestapo as I peddled along, angelically making my way to the office. The first time I was committing the act of cycling in an area that was pedestrian only, but as it was entirely unmarked as such you were understood to know this as instinct, like a baby turtle heading to the water after hatching. The second time I was fined for running a red light. Technically I was bang to rights, but as it’s the second time I’m going to claim victimisation.