"We're having a heat wave, a tropical heat wave.
The temp'rature's rising..."
Irving Berlin
The temperature here in Brighton, as registered by the thermometer in my car, hit 29 degrees yesterday. That's 29 degrees Celsius (When did centigrade become Celsius? And, for that matter, why?) which is equivalent to about 82 Fahrenheit. Hardly life threatening, I would have thought. And yet my newspaper headline yesterday morning screamed,
Heatwave advice: stay indoors
It went on to provide what it called "official guidance on staying safe". Public Health England (presumably a government quango but not one I've heard of before) warned us to close our curtains (to stop rays of sun getting through), not to turn on lights, not to leave computers and printers in stand-by mode (televisions and DVD recorders were not mentioned), to wear a hat, but above all, on no account to go outside between 11am and 3pm 'cos that nasty sun would be waiting to zap us!
What a pity nobody told Edward Payne, whose mortal remains now lie in Stanmer churchyard.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to lie down quietly in a darkened room.
It WAS hot yesterday though wasn't it? I had to sit in a school theatre with 500 hundred people and no air conditioning (blog post on that shortly!) and I was just dripping - not a pretty sight!
ReplyDeletePoor old Edward, what a sad way to go ...
So much for that saying, eh?
ReplyDeleteNow it's only mad dogs.
I would be happy to see 82 degrees in the mid day.
I checked into that centigrade/celsius thing.
It has something to do with precision about which I could care less.
What Skip said about the heat. Central California would be populated by only vampires and other nocturnal sorts if everyone in his neck o' the woods stayed indoors once the temps reached 82. That's also true of the High Plains o' New Mexico, for the most part.
ReplyDelete