14-07-2025
Who needs air con when you can sit in a recycling bin full of water?
It was Bastille Day yesterday and I'd usually be in France, watching the fireworks from the local bastide. However, I've given up on southwest France, in part because of the expense but also because of the heat. When my parents bought their holiday home in the sun 35 years ago, a hot day was anything over 30 degrees. In recent summers temperatures have regularly exceeded 40C. You have to stay inside with the shutters closed all afternoon and it's tricky sleeping at night. I thought I'd inherited a house in Lot-et-Garonne. Turns out it's in the Sahara. It's air con or sell, so we're selling.
Mind you, things are going the same way in London, where 25 degrees used to be a scorcher but now counts as blessed relief from the 30-plus saunas the capital has been enduring of late. It's already hot by 9am, like in the Med, and the bus to work is a (scarcely) mobile greenhouse, the paltry ventilation overwhelmed by the thermic energy of 80 commuters packed in tight. The Tube is an oven, the air through the end-of-carriage window pumping like the outflow from a tumble dryer. Summer in the city.
