did I mention it's hot?
Have you seen anyone in the UK mention that it's very hot here at the moment?
It is hot, for the UK. If you're reading this in any country to the south of the UK then you can laugh about us thinking 30° is 'hot', but here in Britain we are not used to this.
After all, this is the country famous for being wet and miserable, not one dealing with a beating sun and 30° all day. We're used to having plenty of the wet stuff falling on us, not needing to make sure we're drinking enough of it.
British people have just not evolved to handle hot or extreme cold, and 30° is extreme hot to us. To us 20-22° is comfortably 'a glorious day'. 30° is uncomfortable. Some men are even wearing shorts.
Many areas of the country are dealing with 32-34°. The weather where I am is probably tempered by the cooler air drifting in from the nearby Atlantic ocean, but that's not going to be happening in the more populated areas in the middle of the country.
Of course, as usual the news websites illustrate their articles about the heatwave with pictures of people enjoying it in their masses, and no mention is made of the ominous signs of the climate emergency causing it. Note to journalists: No, 'scorchio' isn't great, and we're getting this more and more often now. The extremes of 'freak' hot, cold, wet and windy are not freaky, but simply as predicted by scientists for decades now.
Anyway, I have coped by doing things that involve any physical exertion as early in the morning as I can manage. So this morning I did my workout at 7am, walked the dog at 8, and was out on the bike for a few km's and home again by 10. That was all the physical activity for the day done.
Tomorrow I might start even earlier. Even at 8am, it wasn't actually cool when I took the dog out, but it was cooler than the rest of the day was. Looking at tomorrow's forecast, I think the best time to start may be around two hours before the sun comes up.
Taking my cue from the Mediterranean countries, in the full sun of the afternoon I've done very little. J, the dog and I have hidden from the relative furnace of the day in a living room darkened by closed blinds, windows and doors open on the shaded side of the house only, drunk water in many litres, and in my case, listened to the cricket commentary on the radio with the occasional accompaniment of some snoring.
We have another two days of this, possibly even getting a little hotter, before a more traditional British summer then resumes next week. I look forward to that, and preferably it will come with the comforting and familiar sound and feel of rain.
Written by a real person who completely ignores red wavy underlining and uses brand new real words that haven't made it to a dictionary yet.
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