THINKING ALLOWED (in this case mainly about hot weather)

I am thinking....no I am saying it out loud and using the venacular ... I am not looking forward to the coming week.  It is going to be bloody hot.  We've already had 2 days of 35C and 36C and today is forecast to be 35C followed by 40C (104F),  two days of 42C (105.8F) and then 41C, 39C and 36C.  Not even sure we are due a cool change after that but one can only hope.   It is bad enough having days constantly above 35C (95F) as they say at that temperature we stop working at capacity in mind as well as body, but when it gets higher and stays there nearly everyone is just absolutely pooped.  I wonder if they will keep children home from school this coming week or do schools now have airconditioning?  We had neither cooling or heating when I was at school but with the lower humidity back then I am not sure we felt the heat quite so much.

Even the night temperatures are not going to be much of a relief with a couple of nights expected to only drop to 25C (77F).  That's about my favourite daytime temperature!!

To top it all off our reverse cycle ducted aircontioner has stopped working.  Phil rang last Monday to ask for Derek (our wonderful aircon man) to call but he is booked up all this week and can't make it till Monday morning.   We will be so pleased to see his cheerful face and hopefully he can get the beast working again.  We couldn't afford a really expensive airconditioner when we had this one installed and of course, as is usually the case, you buy cheap and pay for it later.

We are fortunate to still have the old hole in the wall airconditioner working (it must be all of 40 years old as I bought it secondhand in the mid 80s) but it only cools the living room so the kitchen becomes really hot as does the bedroom.  It's an amazing fact we have never had to have any work done on this old aircon. Overhead fans do help in those rooms but only so much, very often just circulating the warm air.

I have a modern in the wall airconditioner here in my den that my wonderful daughter bought me several years ago.  As you will see the light is on and it is cooling me right now.

Unfortunately it was the smallest size she could get of the type she wanted and it is rather too large for this 10'x10' room.  Even when I leave the door open the enclosed back verandah and laundry get cooled too.   I set it on 24C and in no time I am cold as it will cool the room to about 19C.  I then turn it up little by little and fiddle with it all the time.  I am not complaining though as at least I am cooler than I would be in other parts of the house right now.

I often wonder if I am truly feeling the heat more now than I am much older.  For many years when I was young we didn't even have table fans and yet we managed.  Perth's summers have always had very little humidity but now (possibly because the Indian Ocean is warming) the humidity in our city is rising more each year.  For years I drove to and from work in a car that had no cooling and yet I managed.  Even Phil is feeling the heat much more than he once did but then being from England he enjoys Australia's warmer weather.

Enough about me and the heat.....I have to have a whinge every summer and this will be that one and only time so forgive me please.