Dan Jackson: Constant wind blights work and play

Dan Jackson: Time to kick it in the gusts.

THIS wind can just bugger off. Bugger off, I say.

Weeks and weeks of endless gusts is enough to drive a fellow quite mad.

The kids have gone all wall-eyed crazy and the pets are acting strange -- the dog has been running round the yard yapping at nothing, and the cat spends its entire time trying to get inside and then, once in, get out again. She was always contrary, but I think the wind has pushed her over the edge.

As a family, we went and stayed at the beach after new year. I had been looking forward all year to kicking back with a beer in hand while the kids mucked around in the sand.

Unfortunately, I had not counted on the sand coming at us horizontally.

And when it wasn't windy it was raining and windy.

I had hoped to teach the younger ones how to swim in the surf safely but, thanks to the wind, the water looked like the inside of a washing machine.

We had hoped to spend a week, but after we had exhausted all the board games, eaten all the treats and watched all the $2 DVDs, we headed home after two days with a touch of cabin fever.

The wild, unpredictable weather just hasn't stopped -- the kids got little kites for Christmas, but the wind is so gusty the kites fly straight up and nosedive down.

Work hasn't been much better. I work in a shellrock yard and the wind has an awful habit of making little dust devils and blowing it right in my face.

When I get home at night my eyes are watering, and in the morning I'm washing out little shellrock deposits from my eyes. Madness.

I've had to put off any work with light-gauge metal as the wind just grabs it out of my hands.

Another crap thing about working in the wind in summer is that when you step into a sheltered spot it gets bloody hot. You just can't win. It just makes you cranky.

People who work inside probably don't know what I'm moaning about, but go and ask a farmer and I'm sure you'll get a forthright description of this weather. It's almost like the equinoctial winds never went away.

They usually turn up October-November when the sea heats up at this end of the world and the rising temperatures send wind our way. Usually it settles before Christmas, but not this year.

I see Aussie has been going through a bit of a heatwave, so I wonder if that has anything to do with it. (Must have been all those air fresheners we used in the '80s contributing to global warming and nothing to do with the hundreds of atmospheric nuclear tests carried out at this end of the world. But I digress ...)

I've had enough, I tell you -- this wind can just bugger off.

�Dan Jackson is a Whanganui journalist and part-time scrap metal dealer