Listening to the news this morning, I heard about the ‘heat wave’ in south east England. They were giving out tips for coping with the hot weather. They were – stay indoors during the hight of the heat (11 – 3), keep curtains drawn during the day, open windows at night, don’t sit in the sun and wear a hat if you go out.
This is how they cope with the heat here. While the ‘shut down’ time is different, here the peak of the heat 2 and 6, you will not find a sole around during these hours. All houses have blinds or shutters that come down when the sun comes out and of course, the reason why all houses have bars on the windows is because soon as the sun goes down, the windows open and are left open all night. This blows cool air through the house. Of course, more people are getting air conditioning, this will be less of an issue. As for the hats – Ian has a collection of straw hats that people have given him when they’ve seen him out without one. Umbrellas are popular too – for shade, not rain.
The big difference, of course, is everything shuts down at siesta and opens later. We’ve seen the butcher shop open at midnight – as people won’t be eating their evening meal until this sort of time, that makes sense given the heat. And builders start work at 6 in the morning – so I am glad that we are builder free now!
Oh yes, one of the chickens crowed in front of me this morning, it was one of the white ones that we thoughts was turning into a cockerel – so we could be right with 2 boys and three girls (albeit one midget hen).