Tag Archives: sun

Checking the Temperature and the British Summer

Posted on by Steve Higgins

This week’s post is an old one from 2014 but still relevant this summer!

Hot, boiling, sweltering, humid: Any way you look at it the UK is hot! We can’t complain about a rainy summer this year but in the UK we are just not prepared for heat. In Spain for instance it’s perfect for a hot, sunny, holiday. They have their cool outdoor pools, their outdoor bars and restaurants, and if we want to cool down more then we can go inside where traditionally built Spanish properties with their tiled interiors and whitewashed exteriors positively hug any coolness that might be about.

In the UK with our insulated walls and roofing, our houses seem to hug the warmth, it’s hotter in our homes than outside and when we leave our windows open to cool down you can guarantee some inconsiderate noisy sod will be playing his or her music far too loud, Well, that’s the British summer for you.

Something that really bugs me lately is the way the metric system has started to grip it’s clammy fingers around the UK media. When I’m watching a rather interesting documentary on the BBC I’m not interested in the least about how many metres long this or that is, or how many kilometres it is to there from here, I want to know it in feet and inches, I want to know in miles! I’m English and OK when I’m travelling in Europe I accept kilometres and KPH and do the mental adjustment but in the UK I shouldn’t have to do that. On the motorway I understand what it means when I hit the 300 yard marker to the next exit. I know what a yard is, I can visualise it. I understand that the next services are twenty miles away because I understand what a mile is and how long a mile is so don’t start putting kilometres on the motorway to confuse me!

image courtesy wikipedia

image courtesy wikipedia

And, coming back to the heat, when did all this Celsius start creeping in. The temperature today will be a maximum of twenty degrees? What is that about? If you are going to tell me the temperature tell me in the Fahrenheit that I have been  brought up with and understand then I know that seventy is hot and eighty is even hotter!

This is the time of year when the papers will say one day, it was hotter in Dartford that it was in Barcelona or hotter in Brighton than the Costa Del Sol! Interesting. Of course, they don’t say that happened on one day out of three hundred and sixty five or that the last time it happened it was 1973 but either way it’s still pretty interesting. But, and here’s something you should know, on the day the temperature  hits 37 degrees Celcius in somewhere like Blackpool the papers won’t tell you that. No, what they will say will be this ‘Temperature hits 100 degrees in Blackpool!’‘

Yes, the big one hundred, that’s Fahrenheit of course . .

Enjoyed this post? Well, if you did why not try my book, Floating In Space? Click the links at the top of the page for more information or HERE to go straight to Amazon!

 

In the Summertime when the Weather is fine

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Hot, boiling, sweltering, humid: Any way you look at it the UK, just recently, has been hot! (I should stipulate here: Has been hot! By the time you read this it will probably be raining!)

We can’t complain about a rainy summer this year, so far, but in the UK we are just not prepared for heat. Spain for instance is perfect for a hot, sunny, holiday. It has its cool outdoor pools, outdoor bars and restaurants, and if we want to cool down more then we can go inside where traditionally built properties with their tiled interiors and whitewashed exteriors are an oasis of cool, a short walk from the heat of the outdoors.

In the UK with our insulated walls and roofing, our houses seem to hug the warmth, it’s hotter in our homes than outside and when we leave our windows open to cool down you can guarantee some inconsiderate noisy sod will be playing their music far too loud, Well, that’s the British summer for you.

Something that really bugs me lately is the way the metric system has started to grip its clammy fingers around the UK media. When I’m watching a rather interesting documentary on the BBC I’m not interested in the least about how many metres long this or that is, or how many kilometres it is to there from here, I want to know it in feet and inches, I want to know in miles! I’m English and OK when I’m travelling in Europe I accept kilometres and KPH and do the mental adjustment but in the UK I shouldn’t have to do that, especially when I’m watching a BBC documentary.

On the motorway I understand what it means when I hit the 300 yard marker to the next exit. I know what a yard is, I can visualise it. I understand that the next services are twenty miles away because I understand what a mile is and how long a mile is so don’t start putting kilometres on the motorway to confuse me!

Image credit: Daily Express

And, coming back to the heat, when did all this Celsius stuff start creeping in? The temperature today will be a maximum of twenty degrees? What is that about? If you are going to tell me the temperature tell me in the Fahrenheit that I have been  brought up with and understand and then I will actually be able to tell whether the temperature is cold, hot or even very hot!

I wonder if, now that our nation is committed to Brexit and we are finally leaving the EU with all its nasty metric ideas, we will return to imperial measurements? After all, our prospective business clients in the USA still measure things in feet, inches and miles, just like we used to do!

This is the time of year when the papers will say that it was hotter in Birmingham than in Barcelona or hotter in Brighton than the Costa del Sol! Interesting. Of course, they don’t say that it happened on one day out of three hundred and sixty five or that the last time it happened was in 1973 but either way it’s still pretty interesting. But, and here’s something you should know, on the day the temperature  hits 37 degrees Celsius in somewhere like Blackpool the papers won’t tell you that. No, what they will say will be this ‘Temperature hits 100 degrees in Blackpool!’‘

Yes, the big one hundred, that’s Fahrenheit of course . .

Enjoyed this post? Well, if you did why not try my book, Floating In Space? Click the links at the top of the page for more information or HERE to go straight to Amazon!

Thoughts from a Sun lounger (Part 4)

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Sun LoungerI don’t think there is any nicer feeling than to take a dip in a swimming pool and then after a few lengths, return to your sun lounger and lie there peacefully while the hot sun dries your body. You can feel little rivulets of water dripping away and in time the sun will gradually dry you. It’s almost like a sort of rebirth or a least a refreshing of the soul. The only sounds in this remote hamlet where we are staying are the gentle breeze swaying through the branches of a nearby tree, the quiet humming of insects, some bird song and the occasional drone of a far away car or tractor.

You might be thinking hang on, why is this guy waxing lyrical about lying on a sun bed? Yes it’s that time of year again, holiday time. Once again Liz and I have travelled to France to spend time in a beautiful gîte in the Cher region of France.

Travelling down here was a little bit of a trial though. Coming down the M6 in  the north-west we had to travel through the roadworks for the new Smart motorway scheme. I don’t know that Smart is really the right name for this concept but the idea is that the traffic runs along the hard shoulder in the busy periods thus shifting more traffic. So the experts say, anyway. Whether that will happen I really don’t know but at the moment the whole area is bit of a nightmare and when we finally got through that we came across more delays round about junction 13. Throw in some torrential rain and spray, creating really poor driving conditions and you begin to get the picture. Anyway, we made it to the terminal in Folkestone with about ten minutes to spare; many thanks to Liz for her fabulous driving.

One thing I noticed during the journey down here was the enormous amount of tyre carcasses in the central reservation. It really seems to me that Highways England need to pull their finger out and clean up the motorway otherwise I may just start up a scrap rubber company and pick up all those discarded tyres, and believe me I’ve counted a hell of a lot of tyres on the way south. I reckon I can make an absolute fortune flogging all those tyres to Goodyear or Pirelli or even some rubber recycling company. Come on Highways, get your act together!

French phrase book After the hell of UK motorway travel, the roads of France are just a delight. OK, it might be busy round Paris and other large towns but out in the countryside driving is once again an enjoyable experience. Stopping at the services is much nicer too. Not for us the packed UK services charging ridiculous amounts for a cup of tea. The French aires are quiet and picturesque. Nice rural stopping places with picnic tables and nice clean toilets. Lovely.

In the UK I have had a great deal of trouble with my back. The doctor offered me pain killers which I declined, well, I must admit I did take some, the pain was that bad. Anyway I asked to be referred to a physiotherapist. Get the problem sorted out at the source I thought. This gets complicated here so bear with me: I started off with a telephone appointment, one in which you are supposed to make an ‘actual’ appointment. It did not go well because although I rang at the specified time, I was given several messages to listen to and options to choose so when I eventually got through, the lady at the other end thought I was late for an ‘actual’ appointment, not a telephone appointment and could not arrange it for me as I was two minutes late. Anyway, to cut a long story short I spoke to her boss and made an appointment (an ‘actual’ appointment) and arrived on the day only to find that my ‘actual’ appointment had been cancelled due to a bereavement at the hospital. Pity they didn’t tell me in advance. (They said that they had left a message on my mobile – which I never received, although on the same day my garage had managed to leave me a message about my car and my brother had also left a message. Strange that two others had no problem leaving messages.)

Anyway, with me so far? Another appointment was duly made and then two days before that appointment I received a letter saying that had been cancelled too. I called  to complain only to be told I had cancelled the appointment! I most certainly did not, I said in my best aggrieved customer voice. I eventually spoke to a manager and she managed to arrange another date which fitted into my calendar just nicely between work and leaving for France.

When I finally found myself face to face with a physiotherapist, or at least someone who claimed to be a physiotherapist, he spent a lot of time asking me questions about my pain, which, when it first occurred three months previously had been very severe but now it wasn’t so bad, in fact the actual spot in the middle of my back seemed OK but the pain was now in my neck and lower back. Sadly, those areas were not the ones that I had been referred for via my GP. Now those two areas, the neck and lower back, happen to be a matter of inches from the source of the original pain so let me throw out a crazy mad concept here: could they be related? Well, we’ll never know because as my physio pointed out yet again; my GP had not referred me for those areas! After a lengthy consultation of which perhaps five minutes was actual hands on my back stuff, my physio declared my back was ‘mechanically’ sound. How did he explain the pain I asked? Well, that was a muscular issue due to my ‘sedentary’ life style. As we were on the way out he mentioned it was perhaps ‘not worth seeing me again.’

Interesting. Perhaps the problem solving concept was not something this guy covered at university, perhaps they don’t even teach that kind of stuff any more. I know that if I was a physio and someone came to me with back pain my job would be trying to find the source of that pain and cure it or ease it or suggest further treatment for my patient. It’s rather like having a problem with your car and telling the customer, well, we can’t fix that, perhaps it’s time to get a new motor. In this case, no new motor is available! I’m tempted to apply my usual rule here, that names have been changed to protect the innocent but Clifton Hospital in St Annes, Lancashire, you have gone way down in my estimation!

Anyway, the temperature here in our little village is currently in the 90s. (Fahrenheit of course. If you want that in Celsius, I don’t do metric, work it out yourself!) Time for a read, perhaps a short doze, then another swim in the pool. After all, exercise is good for your back!

Make sure your click back here next Saturday for at look at my Holiday Book Bag!

If you liked this post, why not try my book, Floating In Space. Click the links at the top of the page for more information!

More Random thoughts from a (French) Sun Lounger

Posted on by Steve Higgins

sunloungerlogoI really do love France. I love travelling here, driving down the picturesque country lanes. I love the quiet sleepy villages. Driving is a joy here, even on the major roads. OK, I’m sure that in Paris or any of the other major towns driving is just the usual nightmare that it is in London or Manchester but here in the countryside, driving is just a joy.

What is a little annoying is the French system of signing. I’m talking about traffic signs, directional signs. You follow the signs, for instance on the way here we followed signs for the town of Nevers for a while, then we were looking for a right turn and none appeared. OK one did appear but it was unsigned. After a while we realised we must have missed something, so we turned back and guess what, coming from the other direction the road is signed for Nevers but not from the original direction. Maybe there is someone in the French road sign office thinking ‘Ha! Got those English idiots again!’

On holiday in France Liz and I spend a lot of time at the weekend at vide greniers (car boot sales to you) and brocantes, a sort of antiques/ flea market. It always surprises me how well attended these events are in the French countryside and bad weather does not seem to put people off at all. In the UK the first sign of rain or even dark clouds and it’s ‘get the stuff in the van -we’re off!’ The French are made of sturdier stuff and if it rains, OK, get the covers over the goods and it’s off to the wine tent for some vin rouge and some frites while it clears up. I often wonder though, if there isn’t a fete or vide grenier on, what do French people do? They certainly know how to keep quiet! Read this previous post for a few ideas on what they get up to!

The French have a strong connection with food and in particular bread or ‘le pain’ as they call it here. On arriving at our gite in the french village of Germigny L’Exempt we began to unload the car and numerous neighbours came out to talk and advise us. One French chap came over, said bonjour and proceeded to babble away at a ferocious pace in his native tongue. It took me a full ten minutes before I could stop him and say I didn’t speak french that well. ‘Je ne parle pas bien francais!’ Did that stop him? Well, for a moment, then he began again only at a slightly reduced speed. Did we have bread? If not he had some to spare for this evening but in the morning we had to be at the bakers by twelve otherwise, well various dire consequences were explained, none of which I understood, but of course a Frenchman must have bread.

Here in France it reminds me of the UK twenty years ago. Shops closed on Sundays and bank holidays. Unthinkable isn’t it? Over in Calais they tempt British day trippers over to huge hypermarkets and wine stores selling so called ‘duty free’ merchandise at inflated prices. Stores may be open on Sunday there but here in the countryside that is not the case. Of course the bakeries do open on Sunday morning. After all next to liberty and fraternity it is bread that really matters to the French.

Photo by the author.

Photo by the author.

Anyway, one last thought about France. Why is it that whenever I arise from the swimming pool (it’s quite a nice pool, check out the picture) wet and dripping after a welcome cooling dip and looking for my towel, some irritating French fly seems to want to buzz round my head? Just by our gite, there is a road that brings traffic in to our small village. As you approach our holiday home there is a rise and one can see a car rise up and then dip down again as it comes towards us. As I am about to get out of the pool I can just imagine a Frenchman and his son, heading back home with the thought of lunch on their mind. As they crest the small rise the boy looks out at a man rising from a swimming pool and then turns to his father and asks, “Why was that man waving his hands about and doing a dance when he gets out of the pool?”

The father thinks for a moment and then replies, “Il est Anglais!” (He is English!)

If you liked this post then why not try my novel, Floating In Space? Click the links at the top of the page for more information.

Checking the Temperature and the British Summer

Posted on by Steve Higgins

checking the temperatureHot, boiling, sweltering, humid: Any way you look at it the UK is hot! We can’t complain about a rainy summer this year but in the UK we are just not prepared for heat. In Spain for instance it’s perfect for a hot, sunny, holiday. They have their cool outdoor pools, their outdoor bars and restaurants, and if we want to cool down more then we can go inside where traditionally built Spanish properties with their tiled interiors and whitewashed exteriors positively hug any coolness that might be about.

In the UK with our insulated walls and roofing, our houses seem to hug the warmth, it’s hotter in our homes than outside and when we leave our windows open to cool down you can guarantee some inconsiderate noisy sod will be playing his or her music far too loud, Well, that’s the British summer for you.

Something that really bugs me lately is the way the metric system has started to grip it’s clammy fingers around the UK media. When I’m watching a rather interesting documentary on the BBC I’m not interested in the least about how many metres long this or that is, or how many kilometres it is to there from here, I want to know it in feet and inches, I want to know in miles! I’m English and OK when I’m travelling in Europe I accept kilometres and KPH and do the mental adjustment but in the UK I shouldn’t have to do that. On the motorway I understand what it means when I hit the 300 yard marker to the next exit. I know what a yard is, I can visualise it. I understand that the next services are twenty miles away because I understand what a mile is and how long a mile is so don’t start putting kilometres on the motorway to confuse me!

image courtesy wikipedia

image courtesy wikipedia

And, coming back to the heat, when did all this Celsius start creeping in. The temperature today will be a maximum of twenty degrees? What is that about? If you are going to tell me the temperature tell me in the Fahrenheit that I have been  brought up with and understand then I know that seventy is hot and eighty is even hotter!

This is the time of year when the papers will say one day, it was hotter in Dartford that it was in Barcelona or hotter in Brighton than the Costa Del Sol! Interesting. Of course, they don’t say that happened on one day out of three hundred and sixty five or that the last time it happened it was 1973 but either way it’s still pretty interesting. But, and here’s something you should know, on the day the temperature  hits 37 degrees Celcius in somewhere like Blackpool the papers won’t tell you that. No, what they will say will be this ‘Temperature hits 100 degrees in Blackpool!’‘

Yes, the big one hundred, that’s Fahrenheit of course . .

Enjoyed this post? Well, if you did why not try my book, Floating In Space? Click the links at the top of the page for more information or HERE to go straight to Amazon!