Australian Woman Bravely Announces She Dislikes Summer, a Take Nobody Has Ever Had Before

As a self-described cultured citizen of the globe (social media), Guardian columnist Rebecca Shaw has noticed that the internet contains many opinions about weather. She is about to add hers, as Sydney begins to warm and her dread of the hot months kicks in.

As cold mornings ease and everyone and their hot mothers start posting from the beach, Shaw observes friends overseas shivering in fear at the approaching winter, where they will then shiver from the cold. Whenever and wherever cold months happen, people post about having Sad. Not having sad, which is what she calls her depression, but Sad - seasonal affective disorder. For some it is a genuine mood disorder; for others it's hyperbole, in the way a portion of people who merely like their things neat claim to have OCD. But the point stands: there is a common language, and a product ecosystem, for people who get miserable in winter - special lamps, alarm clocks that mimic outdoor light, heaters. She's glad people have that support.

You almost never hear about the reverse, she notes: people whose spirits, not just skins, shrivel in the hot sun.

When she complains about the heat - often and loudly - people occasionally tell her she should be used to it, being from Queensland. That may be true for most Queenslanders, but she is from Toowoomba, which sits 700 metres above sea level and stays cooler than most of the state.

It's not that she dislikes warm weather or gets sick of the cold. She's normal. Her perfect weather is 26C, blue sky with a few clouds and a slight cooling breeze. But in Sydney, on this ever-hotter planet, she gets that perfect weather for approximately two weeks a year. Then it tips into uncomfortably hot, then unbearably hot, and finally into maybe-I-want-to-die hot. Sure, there are fun parts: happy friends, being outside, beers, being outside with friends having beers, and most importantly, stone fruit. A perfectly ripe peach offsets approximately three hours of doom feelings. But summer fun is only fun if you can get relief - and sleep.

This is where air conditioner privilege comes in. Shaw has never lived in a house with air conditioning. When people say they love summer, she presumes they either have air conditioning or are lying. If you sleep in air conditioning, wake up in air conditioning, drive your air-conditioned car to your air-conditioned workplace, then to the beach, then back to your air-conditioned home, of course you bloody love summer. You dip in and out of it while people like her stick to every surface, drape wet towels over fans that blow warm air around, gild themselves with frozen peas, lie in cold baths, lurk extensively in bottle-o cold rooms, pay to see movies they'd never otherwise watch, and mop brows, boobs and various crevices - generally debasing themselves for a sliver of coolness on their disgusting sweaty skins.

The heat affects her mood, and not in a good way. The second she wakes in smothering heat, she dreads the day. She is not built for this. She is of Scottish and Irish stock; she shouldn't be under the Australian sun, getting burned in places she didn't know the sun could see. She should be shivering in a shawl in the mud with some sheep, in the pouring rain, getting inspiration for sad and yearning folk songs. Colonisation, she concludes, isn't just a violent blight on humanity - it was also just really stupid of us.

Admittedly, she has never experienced winter anywhere but Australia. She's sure her anguish over 40C days would be slightly mitigated by long stretches of 5C days, and that she'd start to feel gloomy and yearn for Australian heat. But in her current reality, it's much easier to get warm than cold. She can live in her badly insulated rotting house, not built to withstand any weather at all, and put on socks and jackets and get into bed with her hot-water bottle (girlfriend). But she is not equipped to battle the heat that is coming - and certainly not the worse heat after that, and the worse heat after that (climate crisis).

If you're a summer lover (slight slur), someone who doesn't sweat or who likes feeling overheated, burned and dehydrated, good for you. But spare a thought for those of us who will be Sad about it.