Soso in his garden yesterday

All day long I sat in my deliciously air-conditioned office, even wearing a cardigan it was so cool. And then at 6 pm I stepped outside, and – BAM! – it was like walking into a blast furnace. Concrete and pollution makes the heat particularly fierce in any metropolis. For ten minutes I walked along a concrete pathway to get to the metro station. It was like taking a ten-minute trek through the Sahara Desert. A scorching wind, called a sirocco, was blowing in from the south. Government alerts warned us to stay home, not take public transportation, cancel unecessary outings, etc. It’s hotter today in Paris than it is in Madrid and Rome.

And then I stepped into a subway car and it was like stepping into a steambath (a smelly one.) I think it’s scandalous that a world-class city, one of the most tourist-visited in the world, doesn’t have A/C on its public transport system.

But the good news is that the insufferable heatwave breaks tonight. Spectacularly. In the middle of the night the temperature will plunge ten degrees. And on Saturday, amidst a thunderstorm, it’ll plunge another ten degrees down to 21°C. And the French will complain how cool it is for July.

Here’s Soso in the backyard of his house yesterday: