Unlike almost all of my friends in the UK who were quite pleased to welcome an actual Summer for once, I hated it from the moment that it arrived and that is because I live in the Limousin region of France where it went from absolutely pissing it down every single day in Spring to BAM! Here’s thirty-eight degrees, deal with that.
Now thirty-eight degrees might not sound like a lot, but let me tell you that those forecasted temperatures are the average temperature as expected in the shade.
There is no shade around my house….. unless you are actually INSIDE my house!
My house is south facing which means it gets the sun beating down on it ALL DAY!
Oh, how we marvelled at that little Estate Agent fact when we were buying the house.
How delighted we were with our picturesque French stone (oven) Farmhouse with the Wisteria (wasp magnet) climbing across the front and the sun-drenched (insanely hot) front garden.
When we checked late afternoon the other day, the actual temperature in the full sun was fifty-three degrees!
FIFTY-THREE DEGREES!!!!!!!!!
I know this because we took the highly accurate thermometer (my husband doesn’t buy any old crap when it comes to scientific equipment) from inside our bedroom, which currently showed thirty-three degrees…. (Yeah, you try sleeping in that!) and we placed it on the table in our front garden in full sunshine for about two minutes!
That two minutes sent the reading from a hot and clammy thirty-three degrees to a brain-boiling fifty-three degrees.
I don’t know about you but that is way too hot for me to even form coherent sentences let alone contemplate expending any energy by actually moving about in it.
So, effectively our Spring and Summer has been:
“It’s torrentially raining again, we need to stay indoors”
“It’s torrentially raining again, we need to stay indoors”
“It’s torrentially raining again, we need to stay indoors”
“Yay, the sun has come out, let’s go out to play”
“Jesus H Christ! It’s hotter than Satan’s scrotum out there, quick, retreat, retreat, retreat!”
“It’s boiling out there, we need to stay indoors”
“It’s boiling out there, we need to stay indoors”
“It’s boiling out there, we need to stay indoors”
And before some smartarse comments to me about the inaccuracy of direct sunlight temperature readings.
I know the difference between ambient air temperature and solar radiation.
I don’t need a science lesson in how to accurately take a temperature reading thank you very much.
All I’m trying to demonstrate is that, OUT THERE, IN THE SUN it was stupidly, mentally, insanely bloody hot!
Garden = insanely hot
At the Lake = insanely hot
At the pool = insanely hot
ANYWHERE within a 100km radius = insanely hot
Using the car…… forget it!
So…… we have hidden indoors for the past six weeks, with the fan on 24/7 gasping for air like fish out of water, screaming “Don’t Touch Me” each time one of us momentarily forgets and affectionately lays a hand on the naked skin of the other. A hand that feels like a branding-iron that has been warming in a bucket of red-hot coals, a hand that, to all intents and purposes, could be reaching up from the depths of hell itself.
Soon, we’ll be ordering two cords of firewood for the winter months, where we can once again spend the entire time miserably hiding indoors, this time from the rain, the wind, the snow, the chafing elements, complaining about how cold it is, desperately struggling to heat the house to a lukewarm nineteen degrees, whining about how cold the bed feels with our forty-eight tog duvet and wistfully dreaming about the arrival of Summer again.
I’m keeping it short and sweet this week since it is a topic that has been widely covered from every angle by everyone else, but I just wanted to say my piece.
What is the actual point of looking forward to Summer when, once it arrives, you can’t go anywhere or do anything because it is the equivalent to camping on the surface of the sun?
HOTTEST WORST SUMMER EVER!
The Virtual Recluse
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