Air-cooling machinery - I'm a big fan
I know it’s pointless complaining about our crazy climate, as we have to take what we are given, but weather-whining is as British as saucy postcards and Yorkshire puddings so I’m going to have my two bob’s worth.
I’m melting here tonight. I have the fan on and all of my windows open (I’m running a motel for moths, apparently), but my T-shirt is damp with sweat. It’s been one of those days when the weather just couldn’t make up its mind, and the weatherman described tonight’s conditions as muggy. When I drove to the shops at Cramlington earlier today, for part of the journey I had on my sunglasses and windscreen wipers at the same time – and I’m not even kidding. There was simultaneous brilliant sunshine and steady rain.
And yet this combination of rain and sunshine is the reason farmers plant crops when they do. We appear to expect the summer months to be a festival of fine forecasts, but the reality can be a prolonged period of precipitation. Childhood memories of days at the beach under clear blue skies are perhaps not a true reflection of the reality. We’ve all seen Wimbledon washed out and Glastonbury gunked up as the heavens, and umbrellas, opened.
I have personal experience of camping trips and summer fairs being ruined by the rain. At one funfair I remember, the sight of a cagoule- clad couple going round the big wheel under leaden skies was somehow depressing yet heartening at the same time – just like that simultaneous sun and rain today.
George Orwell coined the term doublethink, which is the simultaneous holding of two conflicting views, and believing both to be true. Today I believed it to be a nice day and a lousy day at the same time.
I hope Room 101 is air conditioned.
up the down escalator 