Every November, the first warm wind of the year sweeps in from the desert, across the coast, and carries out to sea my hopes of going outside again until March.

For most people, the “Christmas Wind”, as I’ve always called it, feels optimistic after the cold of winter. It smells like sunny days, salty hair, cold schooners and cricket. But for me, and all my soldiers in the gingerverse, it smells like dread.

A very young Perry Duffin endured long, hot summers.

People of the SPF50 persuasion truly, seriously struggle to operate when temperatures climb above the mid-20s.

While the rest of the world worries climate change will make Earth too hot to live on, rangas get a preview every year.

All through summer, the sun rushes to its zenith and hangs there, taunting me from an oppressively blue sky. Long into the evening. And just to rub salt into the sunburn, we change our clocks to extend my torture by an hour.

Summer can be dull when half the day is simply off-limits. Let’s sit in the beer garden, the group chat callously suggests. Let’s go to the beach, my girlfriend desperately begs.

But........

© The Sydney Morning Herald