It’s still too hot for writing blogs

 

Although it’s been a bit better today, chiefly because there’s been a real breeze.  I get excellent east-west cross-ventilation at the cottage, supposing there’s any movement of air and it’s not lying on the ground limply gasping like the rest of us.  I actually turned the hellpack’s fan off for a few hours.*  I am so not ready for visitors tomorrow.  But then I’m never ready for visitors, and I have a better excuse than usual.  Mind you I’d rather be cool and useless and inefficient and disorganised than hot and holy.  I was thinking, crossly, as I stomped around the garden carrying yet more cans of water, that it takes an amazing amount of time even to be a bad, careless, slapdash gardener, especially in a hot drought.  ARRRRRRGH.  And the long-range forecast is presently that it’s going to get HOTTER next week.

Angelia

I realise reading your iPad in the dark isn’t good for your eyes

Is this true, or is it like Mom saying that sitting too close to the TV will ruin your eyes? I ask because one of the best things about my Kindle is that I don’t have to turn on the lights to read at night

I think it depends on who you pay attention to about it and how you define ‘good’.  My eyes are sixty years old and have seen a lot of use, and they get tired fast reading an ereader in the dark, while I can read ordinary hard copy in good light pretty much indefinitely.**  Therefore when I read (as I have, somewhere) that using an ereader in the dark is bad for your eyes I automatically believe it.  It probably also varies with your ereader.  Anyone else have significantly different experience reading hard and reading e-, about lighting or anything else?  One of the things I notice about ereading is how much easier it is to skim.

Judith

I actually have many if not most of the old books and many of the newer books on the Antarctic expeditions of Scott . . . I first got interested in Antarctica when I saw the play “Terra Nova” in 1982,

YES.  Although I was already interested.  I met up with Richard Byrd’s ALONE at a relatively young age and it was pretty much a yowzah!

and I realized the dream of a lifetime when I visited there in 2004 (although I visited the “banana belt” off of South America and didn’t get to see any of the places Scott visited, which are off of New Zealand). The bad news is that all of my books are still in packing boxes. We moved in 2008 and still haven’t properly moved in. . . .

WHAT?  Five years later and your books are still in boxes?!?  WHAT????  How do you LIVE?  What are you DOING?  —I suppose this means all your Antarctic photos of your trip are in boxes too so you aren’t going to be doing a travelogue guest blog either.  Clearly you should (a) unpack (b) go back.  Your photos with your new camera will be fabulous.  Fabulouser.

TELL YOURSELF AIR-CON IS BAD FOR THE PLANET. KEEP TELLING   YOURSELF THAT.

No. STOP telling yourself that. Air conditioning has become quite energy efficient. Go out and buy yourself an air-conditioner and install it . . . doing so will break the heat wave and bring a blast of arctic air down on the British Isles that will break all previous records. . . .

The blast of Arctic air idea is very appealing.  The problem is that, first, I have little old-fashioned windows that wouldn’t take any air conditioner I’ve ever seen and since I live in a conservation area I wouldn’t be allowed to change them even if I wanted to go to the expense and wreck the way my 250-ish-year-old cottage looks.  However if this is Global Warming I imagine that even the British might be inspired to invent cranky little air conditioners to fit in cranky little windows.  But second:  if this is Global Warming, I’ll buy a cranky little aircon when it gets invented.  But meanwhile . . . to the extent that I adjust at all to this wretched weather, I do so only by living in it.  I know people whose temperature control is flexible and responsive and they spend their working days in airconned offices and their nights in airconned houses.  In between they walk their dogs and enjoy the summer.  I hate the heat worse every time I’m out of it for fifteen minutes (supermarkets even in England tend to be air conditioned) or half a day.  If I switch to aircon living, I’ll have to build a gym.  For the hellcritters and me.

Harpergray

Sign me up as well for Not Good At Hot Weather. . . . Embarrassingly enough, I was talking to a friend in Scotland yesterday; we both expressed our discomfort in the heat of the afternoon. On a whim I checked Google to find out how we compared to the rest of the heatwave and…in her part of Scotland and my part of Sweden it was only in the upper 70s (F).

UPPER SEVENTIES?!?  You . . . wimp.  Even I, who bow to no woman in my loathing of excessive heat, feel that you can’t seriously complain about a heat wave unless it breaks 80.  Mind you I don’t like upper seventies myself, but it’s not a heat wave.  —And you Texans who have played tennis in 100° degrees can just stop that laughing.

Diane in MN

Do you have wild parsnip there? I was just reading an article about it–its sap causes photosensitivity, so if you get it on your bare skin and you’re in the sun, you get significant burning, sometimes with blisters, and marks that can persist for a long time. (There were pictures.) Who knew? Not me, anyway.

Oh my.  Giant hogweed?  Yes.  And it’s serious.  I’m scared to death of it, especially with my history of contact allergies.  I avoid anything that looks like large Queen Anne’s Lace on principle, and since Queen Anne’s Lace grows rather large around here, I can do some fancy zigzagging.  No, if I were colliding with Giant Hogweed I’d have a lot worse than some ugly red marks on the back of my legs.  I also think I’d notice if I had it in my garden.  Although I do have a couple of garden plants from that family, and I’ve been looking at them suspiciously.   I was watering in shorts again today and jerking spasmodically every time anything brushed against my bare skin—which in my garden is constantly—and, um, general aaugh and angst.  Especially since this will-die-in-long-trousers weather is due to continue. . . .

Blondviolinist

Ugh. We have that around here for sure. It looks a bit like Queen Anne’s Lace, only I think it blooms a bit earlier. One of my friends is an organic farmer, and she has to pull it out of her roadside ditches by hand. (Speaking of the Full Gardening Suit! That stuff is NASTY!)

Yes it is.  Very, very nasty.

Diane in MN

Ground-nesters seem to be more aggressive than the average wasp. Yellowjackets are ground-nesters. ::Shudder::

Yes.  I remember being specifically told that in Maine:  you can maybe sidle around a little and wait on developments if something is buzzing at head height.  If something is coming up at you from below, RUN LIKE CRAZY.

Stardancer

Hellterror photos! I love hellterror photos!

Oh good.

She’s so big!

She isn’t.  But she comes over as bigger than she is—in photos too apparently.  I have trouble remembering she’s a small dog.  She certainly doesn’t think she’s a small dog.  I’m surprised when I pick her up and find out I still can.

I love the Grumpy Uncle Chaos photos. His long-suffering is obvious and kind of adorable.

Yup.  Also, he doesn’t have to lie with his head hanging out of the crate.  And if he retreated I would defend him.  Hellterror MUST learn to leave hellhounds alone if they’re not in the mood.  Darkness is never in the mood.  Sigh.

Diane in MN

Also she’s stuck in the false-pregnancy stage of the end of her heat, er, season: I assume this is a malign collision between the frequent weirdness of a first season and that they kept messing with her while she was trying to have it.

Well, you may not ever see overt signs like nesting to indicate that the false pregnancy has come to an end. A pregnancy lasts a bit over two months, and if she got a milk line, that will take more time to go down even after the imaginary puppies have been born. (If there’s milk, she’ll have to dry up. Vinegar compresses help with that, if it’s a concern.)

ARRRRRGH.  This has been going on now a month-plus.  It’s so not bothering her that I’m a bit loath to interfere, especially since I worry that one of the reasons this first heat has been a bit doolally is because of all the drugs she had just before she got stuck.  And trying to keep vinegar compresses on her would I think be more of a concern.

Mirkat

Ok, yes, hellterror cute, blah blah, but what I notice are the Hellgoddess’ feet – straight line through big toe, nice even spacing between the toes. A touch of tucking under on the last couple toes, but overall some of the healthiest feet I have seen

::Falls down laughing::  Well, I’ve been wearing All Stars about 90% of my shoe life for the last thirty-five years or so, and they’re very foot-friendly.  I used to have narrow feet but they’ve flattened out with age.  Those photos are of me rocked back on my heels too, if I have my weight on the balls of my feet my toes spread out like they’re expecting to latch onto branches. . . .  And, um, what do you do that makes you so conscious of feet?

* * *

* Third House has only one fan—and that’s only as of yesterday.  This should be sufficient for a married couple—supposing they’re still speaking to each other after several weeks’ holiday relentlessly in each other’s company—not ideal, but sufficient.  But I’m worrying about when Luke and his family come back through in a fortnight.  Multiple fan purchases get expensive . . . especially when you’ve just been buying sheets, towels and pillows because most of the old ones are left over from the old house, older than I am and, um, grotty . . . and even John Lewis’ warehouse is going to empty out eventually in this weather.  And we won’t go into the dread topic of assembling the frellers.  When did you start having to ASSEMBLE your fan?!?  I remember the good old days when you took it out of the box and plugged it in.  When are they going to start expecting you to hem your own sheets?

** Being a fidget is an excellent defense against most standard strains, like eye- and back-, so long as you’re not in an office making your boss crazy.