Friday 27th July 2018

Furnace Friday.

Pay Day

Large lake of water found on Mars.

A typical day, then.

For the past few weeks, maybe two months, I have detailed the ongoing drought here in Kent, and as time has gone on, the unbearable temperatures and our struggles to keep out corner of England watered and for us to be able to sleep.

It has seemed like the hot spell would go on forever, and scouring the long range forecast only promised more and more of the same.

We have one of those decorative thermometers, what are they called, Galileo, and has seven weights that drop when certain temperature in the living room is reached. The hottest it has ever recorded is when four weights have dropped; when we used to use the woodburner and that heated the water in the pipes to boiling point, and last week when the days go ever hotter. On Friday, all seven dropped.

And that was at eight in the morning.

I don't know, maybe it was because I was used to the temperature, if you sat still, worked at the table say, you were fine. But any moving about resulted in being drenched in sweat. I joked that Friday morning was the first time I had gone into a shower damper than when I came out! And even a cold shower brought little relief.

So I worked, finishing another important spreadhseet, and yet there was me thinking with integrated systems, spreadsheets were supposed to be a thing of the past? Not now.

The day heated up, Jools had even put the parasol up on the patio, hoping that it would partly block the light and so heat coming into the kitchen, didn't really work.

But as the day went on, it got hotter and hotter, and the poor cats had had enough, Molly again not bothering to eat in the morning.

At half one, with all in DK finished for the weekend, I did too, and went to sit on the sofa to watch the last proper stage of Le Tour. It was still hot, but not as hot as it was for the riders. I read too that in London, for the first time ever, members of the MCC were allowed not only not to wear jackets inside the ground, but did not have to wear one to enter the ground, or even have one with them!

In the end, the weather broke before records were broken, and in fact was slightly cooler than on Thursday, thunderstorms were forecasted, but we had had that before.

Jools returned home at about half three, the cycling continued, and we carried on sweating.

I had the storm radar on, and storms were bubbling up, fizzing and fading, but on course, just before five, clouds built and built, and soon rumbles of thunder could be heard. Jools called out, and as I went out, a gust front had swept from the west, bring in its wake, strong winds and a drop in temperatures of twenty plus degrees.

The sky darkened, and clouds swirled, getting lower and lower.

Then the rain began, big fat old drops, then merging into a downpour, and finally into a torrential storm. Lighting flashed, thunder shook the house, cats cowered and we stood watching the lightning play across the sky.

Wind blew, rain fell in buckets and it was dark before eight in the evening.

We watched Monty, whilst the storm fizzled out outside, getting dark before time, and shrouding the blood moon, a full moon rising in lunar eclipse, was invisible to us here, and for most of the country.

We went to bed to the sound of the rain on the car port, thinking by how much it would fill up the water butts, and knowing that it might be cool enough for some sleep.