Hotter and Hotter

 Friday. 6.15 a.m. A fresher night. It has been really difficult to sleep during the current heatwave.

Saturday. 6.33 a.m. It looks as if I didn't do a great deal yesterday, looking at what I have written above. Well, that might be correct, up to a point. My main concern was keeping out of the excessive heat. I have been drinking plenty and will go to Sainsbury's this morning to top up with more drinks. I ordered several books from Amazon, which will complete my reading of the history of Great Britain from the 1870s through to the early 2000s. This has been an eye-opening experience and I think it has been well worth it. The first of these books arrived mid-afternoon. The second delivery will no doubt take longer, as they are coming from booksellers actually independent of Amazon and are second-hand books.

I am sitting here, writing on my MacBook, with the window of my lounge open, which is keeping the room cool, and the digital thermometer is currently reading 81ºF. According to the weather forecast on BBC Breakfast a few minutes ago, we can expect showers over the next week. I don't think we've had a decent shower of rain for months, which explains why everything is looking so parched, the grass along the side of Strudwick Drive and on Oldbrook Green is looking particularly shrivelled and brown. Mind you, no sooner has it received the first drops of rain, grass has a remarkable ability to revive and I imagine the next thing we'll have to experience will be flooding, as drains and sewers have become blocked with leaves and other debris.

1.45 a.m. I have to turn the television news off at the moment. I know there are huge problems in the world at the moment, such as the war in Ukraine, the cost of living crisis, rising temperatures and so-called 'Climate Change' and a host of other issues. But why does the media have to make such a thing out of the 'gloom and doom' scenario? They did a piece the other morning on BBC Breakfast, of a woman who was struggling to 'make ends meet' by selling off her possessions to pay for electricity etc. Then a piece on how difficult it is to find an NHS dentist. So, there was this person who had problems with their teeth, having to find a way to pull them out, one person making teeth out of modelling clay or something. It was just as bad during the pandemic, with even more 'gloom and doom.' The government used 'nudge' techniques to get people to comply with the rules and regulations about social distancing and staying at home, and even introduced fines if people didn't obey. Nothing was said about anything positive. What about having to obey all these rules to 'protect the NHS'? Too much concentration of protecting people from the so-called coronavirus thing and nothing at all for those who have been diagnosed with cancer and have to abandon chemotherapy treatments. Scaring people rigid by not allowing people to have face-to-face appointments with their doctors or consultants. The big issue I have with all that is that the government only listened to one set of scientists and if you disagreed, you were closed down, and your voice was drowned out. No room for dissent of any kind. 

As regards 'climate change', surely the climate has been changing for millennia? It isn't a fixed thing. There have been huge climate events over the centuries. Think when it was so cold, during the 18th Century, I think,  the River Thames froze over, and they had what were called 'frost fairs' on the ice. Or, more recently, extremely wet winters or summers, the extreme snow we had in the winter of 1962-63 when the country was frozen solid for weeks on end, freeze, thaw, freeze, thaw. None of what you get nowadays, with so-called 'snow days', with schools closed down for days on end when there were a few inches of snow on the ground. None of that when I was at school. You just got on with it and school was never closed when there was snow on the ground or things were frozen solid.

6.45 p.m. I am rather keen on chocolate digestive biscuits. I also rather like Chocolate Hobnobs. So, when I was in Sainsbury's the other day, I saw they were on offer, so I decided to put a packet of each in my shopping trolley. Unfortunately, I didn't put either packet in the fridge when I got home, so when I was in desperate need of a snack and my recollection of those chocolatey treats entered my head, I went to the cupboard, but when opening the packet, I discovered that the chocolate had melted. Which made eating them difficult, without getting molten chocolate on my hands, clothes and other surfaces. But, it made eating them even more pleasurable as their sticky state made them taste better.

Just to report, as I'm writing this post, my digital thermometer reads a staggering 89ºF. Just crazy.