‘It’s too hot!’, I complain. W. reaches in his manbag for a wipe. ‘Rub the inside of your wrists and behind your ears’, he says, ‘it’ll cool you down.’ W.’s prepared for the heat, he said. He watched the weather forecasts. ‘Europe is either very hot,’ he says, ‘or very cold.’ He reaches in his man bag for suntan lotion, and applies it to his cheerful face.
W. is an enemy of sunglasses. ‘Take them off,’ he says, ‘you look like an idiot.’ But it’s sunny, I protest. ‘They block your pineal eye’, he says. ‘It needs sunlight.’ The pineal eye’s in the centre of your skull, W. explains, but it’s sensitive to light. Without light, you quickly become depressed. ‘That’s why you’re so morose’, says W. I’m morose, he says, whereas he, who doesn’t wear sunglasses, is joyful. ‘Joy is everything,’ says W., ‘I am essentially joyful.’
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