It's been warm in north western Europe for the last few weeks, unseasonably warm. Both London and Paris have broken temperature records every day for the last week, and it's been a good time to be selling cold drinks and ice-cream.
All this extra heat has had it's problems. The garden looks rather dry and heat stressed, and I can't sleep properly! Last night was so hot, that not even the bedroom floor was cool enough, I had to sleep on the tiles in the kitchen floor to be cool enough to stay asleep. Now I don't mind heat, and I managed 3 years in Southern California, but unlike California where there is air-conditioning everywhere you go, and it does get cooler at night, Hampshire has virtually no air-conditioning anywhere, and it remains stiflingly hot at night!
What is even more scary is that in Loire where we were a week a go, it was even hotter. My better half, just back from leading a walking holiday there (she stayed a week longer than I), is very happy to be in the UK, it's so much cooler than France!
Someone at work suggested to get a good nights sleep, to wrap the bedding up in plastic bags, and place them in the fridge for a few hours before bed, so that they are nice and cool! Sounds interesting.....
Re:Loire ?
ajt on 2003-08-11T14:45:29
I'm sure there are lots of hotter places in France at the moment, however I was in Tours in the Loire Valley and it was hot enough for me. After I left to come back to the UK it got a lot hotter, it was over 35°C (in the shade) most days, and this is not so clever when you are on a walking holiday. I gather the lowest temperatures were around 22°C, towards dawn.
Outside it's probably peaking at 30°C - which isn't hot in the scheme of things, but is pretty hot for round here, and I'm very pleased I've been installing Linux in the nice and cool server room for the last hour or so.
I live in Texas where we do have air conditioning everywhere we go (in fact, for the first part of your post I was thinking, "Sleep on the tiles? Why don't they just turn on the A/C?"), but a few years back I moved in with my grandparents who were so cold natured due to age that they kept the thermostat set unbearably high on summer nights. I bought a small 13-inch or so fan that I kept on a chair right next to my bed (my computer desk chair, actually) running on me all night and found that that made things bearable. The fan was about two feet from my face.
