August

Huw Williams | 07:15, Saturday 02 August 2014 | Turin, Italy

We have reached that time of year when the city seems to close down. This first day of August puts the whole city on starter's orders and very soon the dash will begin, the great exodus of the Torinese along motorways resembling car parks, to the coast or the mountains.

Usually it feels as though the city's inhabitants breathe a huge collective sigh of relief, and then inhale a massive lungful of fresh sea or mountain breezes, after the concrete of the city has cooked slowly under weeks of baking heat and stifling air, unable to move or escape beyond the wall of the encircling Alps. But this year is different, August has shuffled in rather apologetically, after a June and July indifferent to the anticipation of Summer proper. Temperatures have been unseasonably low and two days of glorious sunshine have often been followed by a day or so of heavy rain.

Not that we're complaining. The prospect of Ali of spending the final month of her pregnancy in the kind of August this part of the world usually has to offer was never an inviting one. I think we both feel secretly guilty that our little miracle has ruined everyone else's Summer...

We have a holiday booked, but under these circumstances it feels a little more like a risk than the opportunity to relax, a strange game of chicken, daring ourselves to venture out, without knowing of course when things will start to "happen". As people are very quick to remind us, "It could be any time now..."

So yes, there's no denying it, the strange limbo of August is even stranger this year, for more than one reason.