Hot, warm, tepid and a few showers
"Have you been out at all today? It's absolutely scorching."
"It's simply unbearable, this heat. I haven't been able to sleep for days."
"Yes it is rather warm. I hope it cools down soon."
These conversations are not uncommon in the sub-tropical and tropical regions of the world. Alas, I am nowhere near the tropic. This is how the locals are finding London this summer. As I try to catch the little bit of warmth in this very rare 25'C to 30'C fortnight, I see around me suffering Brits who are pining for the 17 centigrade-summer that is rightfully theirs.
Oh how much my fellow city-residents moan in this 'heatwave'. Here I am, overjoyed that after several years I'm finally experiencing a summer where I could keep the central heating off for an entire month. Only to reach work to find the air-conditioning has been put so low that my fingers are almost blue within an hour of being there. A friend told me how her work place aircon has been set at a special 'summer equilibrium' temperature which meant that some parts of the building were so cold that one person needed to use a small heater for a few hours. It cannot get more ridiculous.
I will however concede that there is nothing worse than getting into a stuffed tube with smelly co-passengers. Having been raised in the second most populous country in the world, where people have little regard for personal space, I am used to being squashed. But there is something bizarre about the number of sweaty passengers on the underground and bus in London. Public transport in London is designed with insulation in mind and air-conditioning is non-existent. This (or perhaps the lack of a morning shower?) makes it worse.
The houses too are not designed to cope with anything more than 20'C so they feel much hotter than those in the tropics. The strategic cross-ventilation plan based on opening selected windows worked for me, but better still was my neighbour's idea of hopping into a small paddling pool and splashing cool water on herself. This month small table fans are also a big hit. Not bad for a 'once in a decade' sale item says the cynic in me. Still, I did find it very amusing to find a Bajaj air cooler at my local Leisure Centre. I stood in front of it for a few minutes after my yoga class, enjoying the lovely breeze. For those few moments I was transported back to my childhood in Delhi where filling and running water coolers around the house was an important ritual of the pre-monsoon scorching dry summer. And by scorching I mean 40 to 45'C- the kind of heat where, if one were to break an egg in a frying pan and hold it out in the sun, it would be fried in a jiffy.
So weather-gods, please let us have a few more days of this mildly warm but gorgeous London summer. And fellow-Londoners, please stop moaning because we all know it is not going to last. It never does.
"It's simply unbearable, this heat. I haven't been able to sleep for days."
"Yes it is rather warm. I hope it cools down soon."
These conversations are not uncommon in the sub-tropical and tropical regions of the world. Alas, I am nowhere near the tropic. This is how the locals are finding London this summer. As I try to catch the little bit of warmth in this very rare 25'C to 30'C fortnight, I see around me suffering Brits who are pining for the 17 centigrade-summer that is rightfully theirs.
Oh how much my fellow city-residents moan in this 'heatwave'. Here I am, overjoyed that after several years I'm finally experiencing a summer where I could keep the central heating off for an entire month. Only to reach work to find the air-conditioning has been put so low that my fingers are almost blue within an hour of being there. A friend told me how her work place aircon has been set at a special 'summer equilibrium' temperature which meant that some parts of the building were so cold that one person needed to use a small heater for a few hours. It cannot get more ridiculous.
I will however concede that there is nothing worse than getting into a stuffed tube with smelly co-passengers. Having been raised in the second most populous country in the world, where people have little regard for personal space, I am used to being squashed. But there is something bizarre about the number of sweaty passengers on the underground and bus in London. Public transport in London is designed with insulation in mind and air-conditioning is non-existent. This (or perhaps the lack of a morning shower?) makes it worse.
The houses too are not designed to cope with anything more than 20'C so they feel much hotter than those in the tropics. The strategic cross-ventilation plan based on opening selected windows worked for me, but better still was my neighbour's idea of hopping into a small paddling pool and splashing cool water on herself. This month small table fans are also a big hit. Not bad for a 'once in a decade' sale item says the cynic in me. Still, I did find it very amusing to find a Bajaj air cooler at my local Leisure Centre. I stood in front of it for a few minutes after my yoga class, enjoying the lovely breeze. For those few moments I was transported back to my childhood in Delhi where filling and running water coolers around the house was an important ritual of the pre-monsoon scorching dry summer. And by scorching I mean 40 to 45'C- the kind of heat where, if one were to break an egg in a frying pan and hold it out in the sun, it would be fried in a jiffy.
So weather-gods, please let us have a few more days of this mildly warm but gorgeous London summer. And fellow-Londoners, please stop moaning because we all know it is not going to last. It never does.
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