September doesn't usually last this long. Does it?
How does that old rhyme go: 365 days hath September - April, June and November are just fabrications invented by the seasonal gifts industry to sell more Justin Beiber calendars?
(I don't even know who that is, I just saw the name on some kid's top and imagine I'm making a contemporary reference).
In the past, September always seemed to be roughly 4.29 weeks long, but this year it feels like it's lasting forever. Despite my computer, this website, NaNoWriMo and my internal chronometer all informing me that we're rapidly hurtling towards winter, I can still walk outside at night in just a T-shirt without feeling the cold.
Sometimes I wear trousers, pants, socks and shoes as well, though that's more out of decency than fear of catching a chill.
I clearly remember September starting. The Edinburgh Festival went away and I was briefly affected by the customary post-Fringe gloom, tainted by the building excitement of knowing I'd be escaping the country on the 18th. I turned 25 at some point, though didn't tell anyone. I finished work. I boarded a plane to Venice and didn't try to hide my excitement at rising to 40,000 feet and flying over a canopy of clouds.
But that's when something happened. I arrived in what I believed to be Italy, moving southwards and then eastwards through the country over the course of (seemingly) 12 days before travelling across Greece, Israel and now Egypt - but despite the odd spell of rain (still typical September weather mind you), the seasons don't seem to have progressed at all.
The only explanation can be that my plane (staffed and populated by actors) actually took me wildly off course to a painstaking reconstruction of Southern Europe housed inside an enormous, climate-controlled biosphere (probably in Dubai), and everyone I've met since then has been an android. The ultimate goal of this ludicrously expensive undertaking? To make me feel ever so slightly climate-shocked.
But I shall be fooled no more. The game is up, September-extenders. Show yourselves!
This is exactly the sort of thing I was worried about happening, and why I've been so insistent on using ferries wherever possible. You don't get this sort of shit on the Minoan Line.
Novel progress: 10,627 words (21%)
