I think it's officially only starting this week. Heatwave means heatwave! Even if we vote thrice, it'll be a-comin'!
Sunday indeed was max 26°C (hey, I found the "°"! ) in Continental WesShire, and with a light breeze from the north, so it was bearable. The strange thing is that the National MetOffice equivalent are constantly adapting their max temperature forecasts one or two degrees either way! It's as if they wanted to say, 'we didn't mess up, you didn't see that'. It's not dramatic, just funny, when in the morning they say e.g. 29°C and then on the same page, later in the day, it's 'just' 28° or 27°C max. They've just downgraded the max for today, Monday, from 32° to a chilly... 31°.
Humidity is as always in the morning now somewhat annoying, it was 97% at 7am, but is sinking.
[...] What it actually means is that very hot air from Spain will be driven over us by southerly winds and encounter cold air surrounding an area of low pressure sitting to the west of us in the Atlantic. Very high temperatures and thunderstorms will be the result. [...]
Now this is interesting: Continental WesShire MetOffice Equivalent are saying hot air is from North Africa and the Sahara. I am a bit further east and a bit more continental than the UK though.
According to a report I watched yesterday our weather this week will be due to The Spanish Plume which gives me a picture of a giant feather overshadowing the UK. What it actually means is that very hot air from Spain will be driven over us by southerly winds and encounter cold air surrounding an area of low pressure sitting to the west of us in the Atlantic. Very high temperatures and thunderstorms will be the result.
You're welcome.
We have a prayer up in the wool shed to protect us from those Spanish invaders (I’m currently still living in 1588).
We had sunny weather on Friday and Saturday and this week is supposed to be rainy again. According to a woman I was waiting at the bus stop with, anyway, but I’m sure she’s right. Yesterday was cooler and rainy. I actually like it when it’s cooler though - don’t want a heatwave like last year!
Kentwell runs a Tudor week each year, as well as the weekends - and schools visit in costume, travelling back in time through the time tunnel - the local primary school used to go, but I'm not sure they still go so much since the curriculum changes. (Primary history now ends before the Norman invasion, and secondary history starts with the 1066 and all that. Primary schools are supposed to cover the stone age, iron age, Romans, Saxons and Vikings, local history, Ancient Egyptians and Greeks and all.)
Warm Ing has been joined by Blister Ing and Melt Ing-I’m-Melt Ing.
The office is air conditioned, fortunately, but the nights are torrid and only going to get worse. On Friday evening I am playing an orchestra concert and I’m not looking forward to it. I have to take my black silk dress to the cleaners today – I think it’s the only garment I own that I won’t pass out in. OTOH I have it easier than the six-months pregnant violinist. Poor love.
I also rather regret now that I decided to be a hero. We are playing Mozart’s 40th and have no viola, which is a problem because the viola plays the tune for several important sections and its absence makes unfortunate gaping holes. So I volunteered to play the viola part on the cello and now I wish I hadn’t. The cello part was much easier, and that was before it was 38°. Sigh…
According to a report I watched yesterday our weather this week will be due to The Spanish Plume which gives me a picture of a giant feather overshadowing the UK. What it actually means is that very hot air from Spain will be driven over us by southerly winds and encounter cold air surrounding an area of low pressure sitting to the west of us in the Atlantic. Very high temperatures and thunderstorms will be the result.
Thank you, that was helpful! I plan to batten down the hatches and lie low (appreciating that I am so lucky, as a retired wrinkly, to be able to do that....)
What does Quality Bear Time involve - or is that too personal a question?
Not at all - snoozing on the sofa in the company of a generously-proportioned (and imho high-quality) teddy-bear*.
It's a lovely, sunny day here - 23° and not too humid - but I don't know that I'll be taking advantage of it, as I really need to go and work on that thesis. I'd like to get it finished before the middle of the week, as we've got Quite A Lot On after that with one thing and another.
La Vie and Wesley - take care of yourselves as much as you can in that heat!
* He may have only cost $3.50 from the Value Village, but he's quite irreplaceable.
Fortuitously I have a hairdresser's appointment for 9am tomorrow. I am going to have a very short cut, as I suspect that two (or more) showers a day may be needed to cope with the threatened heatwave..
Kentwell still does school visits but not as many days as we used to because of the curriculum changes. When I started 6 years ago it was 2 whole weeks and 3 weekends but now it is just the one week. We open to the public at weekends and today, then mostly schools this week and a home ed day.
I was there 3 days but we commuted from Cambridge rather than camp there - if I had stayed there I wouldn’t be posting! I can’t do more than 3 days as it tires me out and makes me manic.
Primary history now ends before the Norman invasion, and secondary history starts with the 1066 and all that. Primary schools are supposed to cover the stone age, iron age, Romans, Saxons and Vikings, local history, Ancient Egyptians and Greeks and all.
Much as I love England and am fascinated by English history, I am so glad I wasn't an English school student having to learn SO much of it! In the U.S. we give a very brief nod to pre-Columbian civilizations, and then only have a few hundred years to deal with.
Home today and aching from all that spinning wool. I’ve checked in with my work email but have nothing to do (I’m only employed October to June and exams are finished now so just odd ends to tie) so will have a relaxing day reading.
I love studying history! I do several periods of re-enactment; WW1 as a nursing sister home from a casualty clearing station on the front is great fun as I swot up on advancements in medicine and get to discuss taboo subjects such as dying with the public (I teach a module on death, dying and bereavement in my day job). It’s also nice to do a re-enactment role I am confident in, I may not be an expert Tudor spinster but I know my medical and nursing history. My Victorian role at Christmas is as a surgeon’s wife and social reformer and I wander around the manor evangelising people, discussing the challenges faced by poor women and giving out temperance certificates. Non- Tudor roles allow much more scope for individual research and portrayal.
...I don't want to even contemplate overnight lows of 26°.
Then don't even think of visiting the Phoenix area for about half the year.
Due to having such a lot of rain 26° at night brings incredibly uncomfortable high humidity. We need about three weeks of dry weather and hot sun for the humidity to lessen.
Getting washing dry is a nuisance too - it can hang indoors or out and still be damp after a couple of days. 🙄
@Heavenlyannie Your enactments sounds hugely rewarding. Such a good opportunity to learning more about the roles you are portraying, and so interesting for the public too!
Just got back from Waitrose, where I managed to not say ‘aye’ or ‘doth’ to anyone, which is more than can be said for our visit to a sixth form open evening last night, much to my son’s embarrassment.
It is really steamy outside! so damp and humid.
An acquaintance with the prayer book is most beneficial in developing language skills.
When you first arrive in Tudor England the hardest thing is to stop saying common modern words such as ‘okay’. On returning it takes several days to stop saying ‘aye’ in conversation. A friend’s young son, on returning to school after a few days a-Tudoring, stood up in class and loudly said ‘I doth need a piss’!
An acquaintance with the prayer book is most beneficial in developing language skills.
When you first arrive in Tudor England the hardest thing is to stop saying common modern words such as ‘okay’. On returning it takes several days to stop saying ‘aye’ in conversation. A friend’s young son, on returning to school after a few days a-Tudoring, stood up in class and loudly said ‘I doth need a piss’!
I’m surprised he wasn’t picked up on his grammar ‘doth’ is a third person singular form. What he said was the Tudoresque equivalent of the modern English ‘I does need a piss’. In Tudor English the first person form should be (as in modern English) ‘I do need a piss.’
You are far better than me, my Tudor grammar is hopeless (which is why I haven’t attempted Tudor replies here) and I tend to stick to teaching people to spin. Part of my problem is I do more Victorian and Edwardian events than Tudor and my characters there are middle class and well spoken. It takes me ages to settle in and not sound like I’m trying to put on a funny accent.
I probably read the Brother Cadfael books about once ecery other year, and once I'm part-way through them I find myself beginning to talk the way Ellis Peters wrote ...
Very much not envying your heat and humidity; it's 23° and rather lovely here today (and apparently going up to 27° ), but we're due for damper (but still warm) weather later in the week.
The Episcopal laundry was hung out neatly on the rigging of the Ark this morning, but some of the items (to wit, Socks and Nether Garments) are still damp!
The Dry Ing is obviously on partial strike, as the shirts and pillow-cases are OK.
Marry, eftsoons I saw in a chapbook a piece wherein the authors sought to cry up their trade and eke make merry by writing an it were a tale of chivalrie or swich ilk. But they wist not of proper conjugations or declensions but addeth ‘eth’ to every word as ye add salt to meat. I wist not what they teacheth in the schools today.
@Heavenlyannie I'm sorry you're not geographically closer. I book lectures for my local historical society and a talk on historical re-enactment would be fascinating. Coincidentally we had one last year about WWI nursing and also the local psychiatric hospital museum (home of Crichton-Browne and cradle of neuropsychology ) that might have been of some interest.
The humidity here is quite high. [...] By my troth, this weather sucketh mightily!
It doth, doth it not.
Before 4am, humidity here, in Continental WesShire, nearly 100%. I had however the clever idea to not open the windows in the bedroom at night, and so with the help of a (b****y expensive) Dyson fan - but lo, it really worketh well! - I had a couple of hours of decent rest in only about 55% air humidity. Outside supposedly 18°C, inside still over 27°C.
It really seems the nocturnal and matinal airish humidity that maketh it an annoying experience. Thank God - I mean it - for air-conditioned trains and buses to and from work!
Monday, 1 July, is the first day that looks without a heatwave warning on the National Met Office Equivalent website... . Heatwave peak probably today and tomorrow. Luckily I'm off this Thursday. And I'm in a biggish village surrounded by fields and forests.
<votive> for all concerned, especially the elderly and very young, the vulnerable and those in the cities.
@Heavenlyannie I'm sorry you're not geographically closer. I book lectures for my local historical society and a talk on historical re-enactment would be fascinating. Coincidentally we had one last year about WWI nursing and also the local psychiatric hospital museum (home of Crichton-Browne and cradle of neuropsychology ) that might have been of some interest.
Just looked him up and he is certainly of interest to me, as are asylums as my preferred history focus is lay perspectives on health care provision (my modern day teaching in health and social care is specialised in disability, inequality and service user voice and I am about to start some research with students who have mental health challenges). Which reminds me, I have an old book about our local asylum which is begging to be read.
Thank you for introducing a new historical character.
The humidity here isn’t as high as in WesShire, but still, 37° is bloody hot. Including such humidity as there is, and above all the pollution, the felt temperature is apparently more like 47°. In the mornings it’s quite liveable, but at home time, which coincides with the peak temperatures, it’s like wading through molten metal.
My main woe is that we are currently sleeping in the living room (my parents have the bedroom) and it’s a first floor that opens out onto the street. Windows open = deafening traffic noise. Hopefully the 25th floor will be better when we get there.
We have sun, we have sun, we have sun!! No humidity (humidity at these lattitudes is known only in winter) and no wind and no clouds and about 20 degrees and it is a lovely, lovely day. Such a relief after the weeks and weeks of cold and damp.
Can't tell if there's sun here. We're on the ground floor, surrounded by tall buildings, while trucks tend to park outside our window. So it's permanently gloomy in the office.
LVeR Strong string/thin rope between the sides of the window opening. Soak a largish towel in cold water and then drape over string/ rope. It won't add to the feeling of being clammy but it will, if there is any breeze (and the air currents produced by traffic count) cool the incoming air.
For Captain Pyjamas. wrap a freezer cold pack in a pillow case and place in his cot.
Expecting cloudy but dry & breezy today I did a couple of washer loads first thing - then spent the morning putting it out and bringing it in again. The sun finally arrived late morning, and along with a nice stiff breeze, has done what I required of it.
The breeze has also temporarily calmed my worries about blight arriving on the tomatoes, but no more of that sticky humid weather, please!
Comments
Sunday indeed was max 26°C (hey, I found the "°"!
Humidity is as always in the morning now somewhat annoying, it was 97% at 7am, but is sinking.
Ach well.
Blesséd Blighty, once more.
Isn't that a bit modern for your surroundings???
The office is air conditioned, fortunately, but the nights are torrid and only going to get worse. On Friday evening I am playing an orchestra concert and I’m not looking forward to it. I have to take my black silk dress to the cleaners today – I think it’s the only garment I own that I won’t pass out in. OTOH I have it easier than the six-months pregnant violinist. Poor love.
I also rather regret now that I decided to be a hero. We are playing Mozart’s 40th and have no viola, which is a problem because the viola plays the tune for several important sections and its absence makes unfortunate gaping holes. So I volunteered to play the viola part on the cello and now I wish I hadn’t. The cello part was much easier, and that was before it was 38°. Sigh…
‘What’s that Scottish word meaning cold and wet and miserable?
Summer.’
Thank you, that was helpful! I plan to batten down the hatches and lie low (appreciating that I am so lucky, as a retired wrinkly, to be able to do that....)
It's a lovely, sunny day here - 23° and not too humid - but I don't know that I'll be taking advantage of it, as I really need to go and work on that thesis. I'd like to get it finished before the middle of the week, as we've got Quite A Lot On after that with one thing and another.
La Vie and Wesley - take care of yourselves as much as you can in that heat!
* He may have only cost $3.50 from the Value Village, but he's quite irreplaceable.
I was there 3 days but we commuted from Cambridge rather than camp there - if I had stayed there I wouldn’t be posting! I can’t do more than 3 days as it tires me out and makes me manic.
I love studying history! I do several periods of re-enactment; WW1 as a nursing sister home from a casualty clearing station on the front is great fun as I swot up on advancements in medicine and get to discuss taboo subjects such as dying with the public (I teach a module on death, dying and bereavement in my day job). It’s also nice to do a re-enactment role I am confident in, I may not be an expert Tudor spinster but I know my medical and nursing history. My Victorian role at Christmas is as a surgeon’s wife and social reformer and I wander around the manor evangelising people, discussing the challenges faced by poor women and giving out temperance certificates. Non- Tudor roles allow much more scope for individual research and portrayal.
Due to having such a lot of rain 26° at night brings incredibly uncomfortable high humidity. We need about three weeks of dry weather and hot sun for the humidity to lessen.
Getting washing dry is a nuisance too - it can hang indoors or out and still be damp after a couple of days. 🙄
It is really steamy outside! so damp and humid.
Thou hast not said those things which thou ought not to have said, neither hast thou done those things which thou ought not to have done.
There is clearly health in thee, and thou art not (presently, at any rate) a Miserable Offender....
When you first arrive in Tudor England the hardest thing is to stop saying common modern words such as ‘okay’. On returning it takes several days to stop saying ‘aye’ in conversation. A friend’s young son, on returning to school after a few days a-Tudoring, stood up in class and loudly said ‘I doth need a piss’!
Very much not envying your heat and humidity; it's 23° and rather lovely here today (and apparently going up to 27°
The Episcopal laundry was hung out neatly on the rigging of the Ark this morning, but some of the items (to wit, Socks and Nether Garments) are still damp!
The Dry Ing is obviously on partial strike, as the shirts and pillow-cases are OK.
By my troth, this weather sucketh mightily!
[Code-fix - Piglet, AS host]
Before 4am, humidity here, in Continental WesShire, nearly 100%. I had however the clever idea to not open the windows in the bedroom at night, and so with the help of a (b****y expensive) Dyson fan - but lo, it really worketh well! - I had a couple of hours of decent rest in only about 55% air humidity. Outside supposedly 18°C, inside still over 27°C.
It really seems the nocturnal and matinal airish humidity that maketh it an annoying experience. Thank God - I mean it - for air-conditioned trains and buses to and from work!
Monday, 1 July, is the first day that looks without a heatwave warning on the National Met Office Equivalent website... . Heatwave peak probably today and tomorrow. Luckily I'm off this Thursday. And I'm in a biggish village surrounded by fields and forests.
<votive> for all concerned, especially the elderly and very young, the vulnerable and those in the cities.
Thank you for introducing a new historical character.
My main woe is that we are currently sleeping in the living room (my parents have the bedroom) and it’s a first floor that opens out onto the street. Windows open = deafening traffic noise. Hopefully the 25th floor will be better when we get there.
I would wager 'tis not Logick, i'faith.
For Captain Pyjamas. wrap a freezer cold pack in a pillow case and place in his cot.
© Old Organist who took small twins to Cairo in high summer
That's why you need a pre-Vatican II prayer book, with Latin & English on facing pages.
The breeze has also temporarily calmed my worries about blight arriving on the tomatoes, but no more of that sticky humid weather, please!