It’s over tomorrow, the heat is over for another year

[LaurieFairyCake]

Firstly I appreciate this is not the same for the rest of the country

but we’ve had it horrific here (London). I’ve never felt so shit in my life as I have for the last 10 weeks. I’ve spent between £250-350 a month on electricity (portable air conditioners). I’ve felt anxious, headachy, it’s FUCKED with my peri menopause (brain fog, no words, cognitive decline). I’ve felt tearful and as if it would go on forever. There are moments where I’ve thought I can’t take another moment of this. My sleep is proper fucked.

this has to change. I’ve done everything on a personsl
level I can. Air conditioners only when necessary, above 26 inside (DH has long Covid so literally throws up in heat). His asthma is exacerbated. The dogs have had the shittest summer. I’ve had a couple of rescues that can’t go out about 22 degrees. I reckon they’ve been walked briefly 3 times a week. We deliberately went away on a cheap caravan holiday twice just so they could smile. There were endless days I couldn’t work as too hot in my home office and clients cancelled.

I cannot wait til Saturday.

I hope for solidarity from others. I want to wear a fucking hoodie again. I’ve spent every day sat around in my underwear inside for vast stretches of the day. This is not sexy.

That’s like posting on a thread for people suffering with illness and saying you’re good because you’re healthy. Not sure how helpful it is. I used to love the heat and now I’m perimenopausal and feel like I’m going to faint. But all good, because you’re having a good time.

But I can’t change the weather, only how I choose to react to it

People don't 'choose' how they react to heat. People's tolerance differs.
What you might experience as a nice hot sunny day can make others feel sick and dizzy and fatigued. Those whose body can't maintain a stable temperature such as children and the elderly. Not 'all' - but some.

People don't 'choose' to feel shitty and ill when it's too hot. If they could then they'd choose it.

And to hell with those that the extreme heat means a danger to their lives. Shocking.

29 here tomorrow and Sunday.

Where?

The fact that heatwaves like this kill hundreds of elderly and frail people proves that it’s not normal and that our country is not equipped to cope with it. People don’t complain when it’s a lovely summer with 25C sunshine, constant temperatures over 30 are not healthy for anyone.

We might get an 'Indian Summer ' in September yet

The forecast for my bit of East Sussex is a whole 1 degree lower than that! We might even have some drizzle on Wednesday, a 30% chance of it.

What we really need is a few days of steady, but not torrential, rain. I'm tired of looking out at brown fields instead of green ones, and wonder how the wildlife is managing. At least they're not burned and blackened though. I feel so sorry for people who are in areas that have had wildfires.

And, although a bit cooler, still no sign of any much needed rain.

We went on holiday somewhere cool and rainy and it was lovely. I really appreciated it.

There was a bit on about animal sanctuaries earlier, they are inundated with wildlife. We need to stop so much house building, repurpose and remove empty properties from people who are hoarding them. We should have enough houses that can be brought back into use. Stop building stupid rubbish we don't need that are vanity projects by the governing bodies.
Maybe people need to start ripping up patios and using them as gardens again? We are definitely going to need to start growing what food we can ourselves.

My husband has been winter gritting for the council here in the SE since 1993, he can’t recall many recent years where they have had to put the snow ploughs on the gritter lorries.

When he first started in his early 20’s some years the snow would be so deep that he couldn’t see anything in front of him other than endless blankets of snow and one year he jumped out of his lorry and landed into snow right up to his chest.

I truly believe those days are part of history now.

Yesterday it said 32 in my area but my thermometer said 41.
Today its 33 I think its higher.

Indoors its 20, air con on full blast.

My partner is from Eastern Europe and likes to spend 2 weeks each Summer at his family's village. It's not usually much fun for me and we haven't gone this year as I'm heavily pregnant. But I now cannot wait to go next year after this torturous UK Summer living in a pokey terrace! All of the houses in DP's village are detached with plenty of their own land and all have proper air conditioning units. And you can get a bus to the local town which has an outdoor pool. Every reasonably large town in the country has an outdoor pool (and it's only a few quid per person entry fee, unlike the few water parks in the UK where a full day out for a family of 4 would probably cost £100+ meaning that most could only manage it once in the 6 weeks holidays), it's a landlocked country and not a holiday destination but they are much better equipped to deal with high temperatures. Even though it's a poor area of a "poor" country it makes the UK seem archaic. We're still throwing up shitty new builds that are designed to trap the heat. Insane.

I can deal with anything in the 20s, but as soon as the temperature shows 30C or higher, I get cross instantly! It's ridiculous really! I had to cover over the digital display on a couple of our fans because as soon as they started showing a higher temperature and not reducing in the evening, it was really stressing me out - which of course makes me feel even hotter!
I have my big fan on and my little bedside fan on, but then I have to wear something around my ankles because otherwise they start to cramp up because of the breeze- it's ridiculous!
My lovely husband went and bought me small Ninja ChillPill fan back in April because it was already heating up, so that comes everywhere with me when I'm not at home - heatwaves and menopause do not mix. At all.

The people now sneering about a "bit of heat" are the same people who've been saying climate change wasn't real at a time when we might have done something about it.

Getting darker sooner has definatly helped that blazing sun we had till 10pm was a killer.

There was a year in the 80s where we had a really warm spell that lasted into October.

It sticks in my mind because I remember walking to the pub in a summer dress and no jacket on the evening of a friend's birthday, which is 3 October. We were joking about the possibility of the warm weather lasting till Halloween or bonfire night.

That is off the chart horrendous.
tacky
sticky with hot feet, I bet
Bad for water surface run-off
made from plastic - too much plastic in the world
required a mechanical process to make - waste of energy
most off, replaces natural grass, which we need.

its all that is wrong with the world.

I’ve enjoyed the lovely summer generally, not so much the extreme heat though.

Summer is my least favourite season as I feel the heat intensely (I can feel hot in January 😫). I also have dogs that I feel sorry for, not enough walks, once early morning. However, I’m also not looking forward to a wet winter as my garden has clay soil and is literally a soggy bog in winter. Having to keep wiping two sets of dog paws every time they went out to do their business drove me insane. Also had to keep washing towels after drying them off. The council doesn’t clean the pavements or roads anymore so the filth was eye opening. Anyway, just to say I’m slightly favouring dry and hot which I never thought I would say in a million years. If you have time for a nap during the day, it lowers your body temperature for a while.
Edit to add this isn’t necessarily over yet. A meteorologist said the other day that we could be in for more hot weather throughout September.

I'm currently pregnant and it's just been absolutely horrific! I was in ikea the other weekend and they had a room decked out in Halloween stuff - the temptation to just there in sweet denial for a while was strong! Roll on autumn!

Yes and in Spain, too. You only have to go into a park with lots of trees to feel the immediate difference

This happened last year, still warmish in October.

I'm so sad for all of the dogs. My usually active and happy 2 year old cockerpoo is showing signs of clinical depression. I took him to the vets as I thought he was ill and they said he's fine and it's the heat and they've been seeing this a lot.

There's a knobhead on my estate who's been dragging his panting German Shepherd around every day at the height of the heat and there's a lynch mob out for him in the local Facebook group!

“Slightly out of the ordinary” 🙄 either scared or wilfully obtuse