How hot is hot?
The Country Mouse and I have an ongoing debate every summer, one which is never resolved and merely reappears again and again when the mercury climbs and I start seeing a ‘3’ in front of the temperature forecast. The CM grew up in the country; I grew up on the coast and this defines our notion of heat.
After he kept declaring “It’s not hot” day after day despite the fact that the bitumen was almost melting, I pinned him down to put a figure on ‘hot’. He volunteered that for him 38 degrees is hot and 40 degrees is very hot. Me? 30 degrees is hot and 40 degrees is a temperature not fit for human habitation.
On one recent notorious Tuesday a strange heat alliance meant that the Lower Hunter Valley and Sydney both simultaneously experienced a 43 degree day. The different reactions of the citizens say it all. I was with my urban compatriots in Sydney where the news cycle was dominated by one story – The Heat.
The City Mice wailed and the city media warned ‘Don’t go outside, take shelter, lock up your pets, tend to the elderly – or you will all die’. Shopping centres and cinemas overflowed with the hot, frightened citizens of Sin City. As I joined the exodus into the heavenly cool of Hoyts a woman next to me in the queue confided “This is my third movie today”. When I asked what she was going to see next she said she didn’t know and didn’t care, all she just wanted was to be safe from The Heat.
Meanwhile at the Country Mouse house the rural residents proved they were made of sterner stuff. After months of negotiations our solar electricity was finally installed - yes on that same Torture Tuesday when the mercury reached 43. When I queried whether it was wise for the installers to clamber over the roof handling glass panels in those temperatures the CM scoffed – he would provide cold drinking water for them, what more could they want?
Despite my frantic plea, “Cold water, they’ll be beyond cold water - they could die up there!”, the solar panels went up without a hitch and the installers even knocked back the offer of a cooling drink. They make ‘em tough in the country.
And from temperature hell to angelic news (don’t you love the segue?) I’m still feeling gutted at the news which hit just before writing this post. The Angels front man, (he will always be The Angels front man to me, despite the band’s multiple line-up changes) the enigmatic Doc Neeson, is in hospital being treated for an aggressive brain tumour. The news is bad, bad, all bad, with the cancerous tumour described as a ‘four’ on a scale of one to four. The only (slightly) good news is that this has caused the bitter divisions between some of the former Angels and Doc to finally have been put aside.
The Angels are in my Australian musical pantheon. In the late 1970s, like many an awe-struck girl, I had a huge crush on the tortured poetic Doc who with his Irish lilt and artistic sensibility didn’t seem to live on the same planet as other rock and roll singers. If you ever saw the Angels play live Doc didn’t just sing, he was possessed; for a great insight into why this was so the profile ‘The demons in the Angel’ written by Stephanie Woods in the Good Weekend magazine, Sydney Morning Herald on 25 June last year is worth a look.
So tonight I’ve got tears for my favourite Angel. Doc here’s to you, take a long line and fight on: ‘this is it folks…over the top’.
Well, I was born & bred in Sydney, however, upon relocation I found I actually do not mind a bit of heat. However, I do not like 40c plus heat, I can tolerate up to 35C & that depends on the humidity, it's the humidity that is the killer. When I have been in Crete & it has been hot it is still bearable, why - no humidity!!
ReplyDeleteMy partner likes the heat but not over 30C (so on goes the air-con), me it is actually nice to feel a bit of heat on my skin, dare I say a bit soothing! I have to admit that for some of the hot days recently when we parked ourselves inside or took in a movie or went to the mall for retail therapy, there are always options to cope !!
The blogosphere is doing strange things and the Country Mouse can't post his comments, so here they are (posted on his behalf).
ReplyDeleteCOUNTRY MOUSE:
"Perhaps I should have mentioned............ Not only were the solar installers all from the big smoke....yes...from SYDNEY....you know that place were roads melt, buildings crumble, bridge buckles, opera house sails melt and run down into the harbour, the minute that the temperature scale exceeds 30 deg C, but one of the installers even took his shirt off. Ours was the second instal for the day and when finished on ours they were off to Carrington to instal their third for the day.
"May I pose two questions....... What temperature scale are you referring to when quoting the word HOT once above 30 deg? Maybe it's different to the CELSIUS scale to which I refer. In the OLD days when Fahrenheit was used in Aust., it was HOT once it got to OVER 100 deg F. (38 deg C), so therefore, it's not HOT until it's above 38 deg C, not 30 deg C.
"Secondly, as global warming has NOT increased our average ambient temps, let alone any RECORD high temps in my time on this earth, our parents and their parents before them etc, etc, would have endured similar (if not HIGHER) temps in their days....... but Sydney didn't melt then and our fore fathers (and mothers) didn't have AIR CONDITIONING.
"Both of our lineages came from much cooler areas of the Northern Hemisphere and managed to struggle through the OVER 30 deg (86 deg F) days without melting into the molten tar on the roads on which they walked or rode on horse back.....Oh, maybe the horses were Air Conditioned?????
"For all time, save the very last of the 20th century, Air Conditioning meant you wound down the windows, if you had any.........How ever did they survive. And they were not allowed to go swimming at Bondi (or any other beach) and they wore long dresses and suits.
So, when is HOT, HOT?"