These heatwaves are hard.
This one is not quite as bad as the last one, at least so far. I’m very drawn to Jay’s suggestion that we start naming heatwaves in a similar way to how we name storms. It’s tempting, if possibly counter-productive, to say that we should restrict the name pool to outspoken climate-deniers. I leave you to come up with your own suggestions. Anyway, the problem with the previous one was that it woke us up (sic) to the concept of “tropical nights”, which sounds like a spicy Harold Robbins paperback but is actually horrible when experienced in the reality of a British house built from heat-retaining brick, more than 100 years ago.
A “tropical night” (the scare quotes will continue until morale improves!) is one where the temperature overnight doesn’t go below 20ºC – turns out they also use the term “equatorial nights” to refer to those where the temp remains at 25ºC or above, but please, don’t encourage them (the Met Office? who comes up with these things?)
And then along with the childhood reminiscences of 1976 in the horrible bits of the media there’s the claim that the cold still kills far more people in the UK than the heat, which I’m sure is reassuring to people who’ve just lost a loved one to Heatwave Murgatroyd.
I probably wouldn’t have been moaning as much if we didn’t have a little one to look after. He was born in December and so his whole life we’ve been making sure that he’s warm enough and then suddenly we had to switch him to just a nappy at all times, with a vest on standby for if we’re lucky enough to *not* have a “tropical night”.
I got too agitated about it all on bsky one morning after no sleep and too much time spent reading North Americans saying “Let them eat A/C!”
It’s currently too hot to work out a better way of embedding the whole thread, as if anyone’s interested…
I also spent far too much time watching the weather radar on windy.com as storm after storm just missed Godalming. A couple of nights I saw lightning on the horizon, but we didn’t get any real rain for days and still haven’t had a good downpour.
Now that we’re into Heatwave Norman I don’t even have that luxury/idiocy – there’s no rain to be seen on the forecast at all. We’ve settled into our minor adaptations of blackout blinds in the bedroom and a rota of opening and closing windows according to the time of day, staying hydrated and getting sleep when we can. Bigger adaptations are going to be needed. I just don’t know what, when and how.
Anyway.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking/writing about what I want to do next in what I can only call my “public life”, in the light of both getting older and having a new small person. It’s taking shape. One of the insights has been that my theory of change is quite different from many of the people I spend time with and that rather than picking holes in what they believe, I need to articulate and refine better what I think. So I’m doing that. But it’s not ready to splurge about yet.
But this morning I updated the invitation to Living Culture Coffee Mornings with some of that in mind. It now reads:
I believe that we’re called to help build a more equal, loving, tolerant, peaceful society – one that can melt away selfishness, hate and conflict.
I also believe that this only really happens when people talk through and work on things together as peers.
And my experience has been that, while there are some amazing and heart-burstingly joyous examples of this happening, in general people (yes I am people too!) still need lots of practice to talk or work together well.
These conversations are one contribution to an idea that’s gaining favour around here. Dougald and Anna have called it “regrowing a living culture” and I thought that was peachy, so here we are.You don’t have to come knowing what a living culture is or have any idea how to start regrowing one. That’s exactly what we’ll be talking about, with the hope that by doing so together, we’re getting started on a simple path of regrowth.
You can also breathe a sigh of relief that I won’t be lecturing you on the subject! You may not be surprised to find that many of the conversations we have take a spiritual (but not necessarily religious) tone.
Everyone is welcome, but you do need to sign up. There is no homework and no qualification for attendance except an interest in chatting about this stuff.
You don’t have to be there for the whole thing if it’s inconvenient for you this time – “arriving late” or “leaving early” have no meaning here. There will be time to share announcements at 11am (remind me!)
So yeah, that feels better. Next one is online on Friday 10th. Subscribe to the calendar to get invitations as they come out.
Perfect Path 