Linen grows - and it doesn't tell you it's doing it either

...as I discovered, yesterday. I was wearing a pair of linen dungarees (while it is still within the limits of sociable acceptability, age and crassness to wear dungarees) and by the end of the day they had grown by a good two inches in length. I know this because when the rain finally came, I walked through a few puddles - happily, because I'm always in chinelos/flip-flops at this time of year, and don't give a damn if my feet get wet and filthy (well, they ARE waterproof you know... honestly there are too many people these days who are squeamish about dirt... ESPECIALLY HERE...it'll be the undoing of us, I tell you) - and realized too late that the bottoms of my trouser legs were well and truly under my feet.

I believe my dungarees grew because it was the most incredibly long steamy day that took forever to culminate in a thunderstorm, and even the thunderstorm wasn't enough to get rid of the built up steam from the day.

There were people dragging themselves down the street, trying to get home, but through 110% humidity in the air, they were finding it incredibly difficult to even breathe. I would say that I was also dragging myself around, but that's no different from any normal afternoon when the sheer weight of existing for a morning has worn me out.

And the sky had that strange metallicky peachy purpley sheen to it, like you're looking at it through cling film (don't you hate cling film?)

And this morning the air is clear and the pathetic amount of rain yesterday won't have made a ha'pence worth of difference. Portugal is turning into one of THOSE places... THOSE places being where the weather is so changeable that the locals "invent" a local saying that goes like this "If you don't like the weather in England/Scotland/Wales/Cornwall/Devon/Ireland/Iceland/Newfoundland/New Zealand/ Seattle/Toronto, etc. etc, then wait fifteen minutes" (S.N.O.R.E.... I LOVE weather like this...I just hate SAYINGS).

And believe me, if my neighbours "invented" a saying like that, I'd be hearing it for the next forty years or until they kick me out, whichever comes sooner.