Mushrooms : net weight 290 gr
Drainage weight 170 gr
Schweppes Indian Tonic: contains 211 kJ and 50 kcal per 200 ml
Can of Juliet with beef and liver: 415 gr
Spanish extra virgin olive oil 750 cl
Ask me about the contents of a can of fabric softener, hand soap, peeled tomatoes, a bottle of ketchup or a bottle of cranberry, and I’ll give you the right answer right away.
No, I’m not preparing for a passage past De Slimste Mens. And no, I don’t intend to take a retail crash course and take over Carrefour and C&A and Leenbakker at the same time.
I have become a victim of ultimate boredom and of 40-ers on my thermometer that can only handle 40.
I briefly became a refugee, not a political one, not an economic one, but a global warming refugee.
I did not heed the “warm” call from the mayor and aldermen to withdraw with my rheumatic knuckles and hinges into one of the many cool rooms they had provided for their old constituents.
No, I screamed, not for me! I have a cool cellar in which I can hide in high heat distress!
And I entrenched myself, because the need was great. But first I should have taken care of the seating comfort because I heard it announced a long time ago, from a Philips and from a Bang&Olufson, from the smallest radio and on a mega TV: We’ll reach 40° and more!
Of course I could sit on a beer or a beer trough steaming until the temperature became less merciless. But Rodenbach didn’t find you in my cellar, any more than Gezelle or Timmermans. It could also have been on the Trappist, but it was as far away as a Jesuit.
That seating comfort didn’t even come from that far. It came from just around the corner, in Welzijnstraat, where it served in my garden house to sit and stare at and wait for the sprouting of romaine lettuce and cucumber.
It was a white plastic garden chair, tub model, with two armrests, ideal for surviving in a churning position, the knees with little protocol and not according to etiquette slightly apart, in a cellar 40° and more.
One of the long summer evenings I took him home, still the lawn chair. I no longer had spectators or supporters at that hour. Everyone watched Vive le Vélo or Switch or sat outside in their garden in their personal lawn chair.
Only Philomena had just returned from her job at the retirement home. She said hello and cooed in her own Surinamese way. She had barely passed me when I heard her talking on her smartphone. Well mom, she will have said, you in Paramaribo still use a walker when the legs are simmering. Not ? Here people take their garden chair everywhere. That’s weird here!
I accelerated my pace for fear of also meeting Balasim M.Alsaàd and costing the goodblood with a long-distance call, read desert message, in which he told the home front that one uses a chair here and one has a grandmother, like his in Iraq , do not cross a mule when walking difficult. But Balasim was certainly still roasting kebabs for hungry people from Ghent on Sint-Jacob.
I got home effortlessly with the garden chair. The garden chair ended up in the basement in time. The cellar would be my salvation from the heat. The heat came the next day. The next day struck mercilessly, but in the afternoon I was enthroned in my white garden chair in my cellar, surrounded by cool air and cans of mushrooms of 290 g and Julietjes of beef and liver of 415 g. There were also the many varieties of 75 cl champagne and summer wines, even with the right price. Or had the sudden dip from hot to cool also affect my discernment?
During my descent to the Bevegem catacombs, I had taken all kinds of reading and relaxation with me in an Action shopper, once and in one flowing movement to avoid generating too much energy and having to ascend to the ground floor again.
In addition to a tablet and a smartphone, my regular walking phone, writing paper and ballpoint pens, handkerchiefs, because even in a cool cellar emotions sometimes hit very hard, fruit and ice-cooled drinks, a few dry chunks of Friskies, not for myself in the context of inflation and the savings only for Miss, the cat, if she sought and found me and there were also some advertising brochures for champagne and summer wines. The large crossword book Philippine the Fat was right on top.
Until 7 pm I kept it between my canned mushrooms and my bottled olive oil.
I had filled in 7 philippines, written a column about the future stadium site and read articles about humor and how some people are born without a humor gland, a lesser-known body part but an added value for a positive attitude.
Then I ventured the ascent into the heat to watch the news on TV. They told there that we had even exceeded 40°. I looked next to me and there in the sofa was Miss, a large black panther with blue eyes. I smiled at her and said:
You only half know what that little bit more than 40° does to someone…
