RogerBW's Blog

Surviving the Hot 27 June 2020

I do not get on well with hot weather.

And I don't notice that I'm not getting on with it. During the last batch, it took me about three hours to go from "I am feeling far too hot" to "hang on, I have a freezer that produces ice and chilled water, I could have some of that".

This is why my email sig has, since 2003, included the local temperature: if it's more than about 25°C I'm probably not making sense. (Also, to be fair, because it was enjoyable to write something that would fetch the local temperature.)

Yes, air conditioning is rare in the UK. Traditionally the problem here has been excessively cold weather (but of course we are all asked to believe that there's no such thing as climate change). And modern house-building's main answer to either is to seal the house and allow no airflow at all; for me at least I'd rather have slightly hotter fresh air than slightly cooler stale air.

Other things that have been useful (reminder to Roger for next time this happens):

  • having an open window, but the curtain closed behind it. Some people swear by keeping windows and curtains closed until the outside air has cooled off a bit, but I find that with a south-facing window even the closed window plus blind plus curtain still radiates far too much heat into the room to leave it comfortable.

  • moving to a room on the shady side of the house and taking advantage of whatever breeze there may be. (I'd already set up ethernet to one of the front rooms to run the video links for on-line RPG sessions.)

  • the great big "Aladdin" insulated mug that I bought on a trip to the USA some time in the 1980s, which will hold plenty of water-and-ice (I think it's 34 US floz, so just over a litre) cool enough that there's still ice left after I've drunk the third fill of water. And it doesn't drip condensation. Some people would use this for hot coffee or fizzy drinks, I suppose.

Tags: real life

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