meish dot org: life, unfolding

Saw this at the bus stop this morning. After a week or more of snow, slush, ice, more snow, slush again, ice, fog and now rain, and people huddled into winter jackets, snowboots, scarves, woolly hats and the like (a look I like to call “survivalist chic”), it was quite pleasing to see something cheery on the morning commute.

(This photo was taken using the Hipstamatic iPhone app, which aims to replicate various analog lens/film/flash gel combinations. It’s a well-built app, but I’m slightly frustrated that I can’t Hipsta-fy existing camera roll images, like you can with Camerabag - just take shots through the app itself. I suppose it all adds to the rather hit-and-miss analogish experience, though…)

Not to underplay the serious inconvenience caused by inclement meteorological conditions to some parts of the UK, but I’d just like to take a moment to reflect on this typically calm and understated headline from yesterday’s London Evening Standard:

A few points.

If you’re still measuring the snow in inches rather than feet or yards, it’s not an “extreme” weather event, it’s a “bothersome” one. The words “extreme weather” should apply to total snowmageddon, not tobogganing & a bit of a whinge about slippery pavements.

“Extreme weather” seems like a rather odd overstatement by the Met Office. It brings to mind scenes from The Day After Tomorrow. Epic, unbelievable, unusual weather with catastrophic effects.

Hurricane Katrina was extreme. The 1988 ice storm in Quebec was extreme. The heatwave + drought + bushfires in SE Australia in early 2009 were extreme.

In this photo, taken during last night’s snow, you can still see the cars.

This is a good indication that it’s not an extreme weather event. Yet. Whatever the hysteria from media and transport providers may otherwise indicate.

OK, it doesn’t snow often in London, but it does snow in southern England in winter sometimes, and in northern England and Scotland more often. So it’s not that weird.

We can be forgiven for being underprepared for a long stint of cold or inclement weather (hot, cold…) because most of the time, this country is just a bit middling, weather-wise. But we have no excuse for over-reacting and creating blanket hype and pointless coverage about extreme hardship and crisis caused by some seasonally-expected wet white stuff. Breaking news: snow happens in winter.

Snowpocalypse by antimega

(My favourite example of this was yesterday, when my local train service provider, SouthWest Trains, cancelled a number of services for today in advance because of the weather, which I thought was particularly brilliant considering it hadn’t even snowed yet. It was almost like they were saying “we know that however much it snows, we’re not going to be able to cope”)

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While m’colleague Neil and I have been whinging about the temperature* in our office for a few weeks, we haven’t, until today, been able to do so with statistical verification.

I brought a cheap thermometer into work this morning and we’ve established that - even with a portable A/C unit blowing through the open door - the climate in our fifth floor cubbyhole is balmier than Bankgkok, Harare, Bermuda, Mexico City, Calcutta, Athens and Istanbul, to name but a few.

As I write, the mercury has just reached 36°C (97°F), which I think must make it one of the hottest offices around.

Unless you know different?

I invite you to head to your nearest purveyor of temperature recording devices (most hardware stores, some bigger newsagents and supermarkets, pretty much all DIY emporia) and plonk your thermometer somewhere for a bit, before taking a photo of it and uploading to flickr (we’ll make a pool if we get enough). We need photographic evidence because otherwise you could just say your office was 60°C, couldn’t you?

Post a link to it in the comments here, or let me know via flickr or something. The inhabitant of the hottest office will win something suitably cool.

[No cheating, now: I don't want to think of you clamping a thermometer between your thighs to get it up to a suitably impressive level, y'hear?]

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Hottest day ever in the UK, apparently. I know, I’ll shut up about the weather at some point, I promise. Trouble is, when it’s this clammy, it’s actually quite difficult to concentrate on anything else.

Anyway.

With another scorcher predicted, P and I jumped in the car and headed once more for points south, ending up this time in….West Wittering again. Well, it’s just what you need on a day like this.

And it *was*. What we needed. Exactly what was required: a chance to enjoy the summer rather than resenting it (or watching it swelter from behind corporate smoked glass only to retreat behind clouds when the working day is over).

The beach was packed out with punters, but practically perfect in every way. Sunshine, sand, a light breeze, sea the perfect temperature for swimming. It all just came together, in one long sunny afternoon on the South Coast.

We swum lazy laps to the sandbar and back. We lay on a blanket and read. We ate chicken drumsticks smothered in barbeque sauce. We even exposed our pallid city legs to the world (first time for everything), figuring that if ever there was a time to reveal an imperfect body, it was on a sunny beach full of others just as lumpy, bumpy and pale -along with, of course, the few adonii who we went to great pains to stand very far away from.

But the main point of this: I haven’t swum for years - the last time was in the sea off Iona, I think, or possibly in Greece - and it felt fantastic. Consider me now resolved to book a holiday for next year where I can swim in the sea. I’m going to take my cozzie up to the Hebrides when I go on holiday later this week, but the weather’s supposed to be turning, so I’m not confident that I’ll be able to go for more than an extended paddle. Hypothermia isn’t a good look.

OK, I’ve been quiet so far about this latest heatwave, because there’s nothing so cliched (or boring) as British people moaning about whatever weather they have which falls outside the average UK (Sort of not warm but not cold either, a bit overcast. Should I take a jacket out? Will I need a brolly?) day.

So let’s just pretend I’m not British, just for a second, while I say by ‘eck it’s hot. I mean hot.

I know, usually when Brits say hot they mean somewhere in the mid seventies (25° in real money). Likewise, when we say cold, we mean around 30°F (ground zero, baby). But today - this week, in fact - is officially hothot. As I write, in the comfort of my study at eight o’clock in the morning, it’s already 25°C outside, and predicted to hit 37°C at the hottest point this afternoon (that’s 100°F, or near as dammit).

A small tangent: I simply cannot get my head around Fahrenheit, as hard as I try. It just doesn’t make sense to me. The bloke on the radio says “temperatures could get up to the mid eighties by lunchtime” and I just think of Wham and Culture Club. Now centigrade, I can understand. Makes sense. Freeze at zero - boil at 100. Nice and simple.

But in any measurement, today is meltingly, achingly, sweatily hot.

It’s times like these that I realise
a) how lucky I am not to have a commute which involves a tube journey
b) how lucky I am not to have to wear a suit every day
c) that this country simply isn’t built for this sort of hotness - where is the A/C as standard in every building? Why do our railway lines melt?
d) that I am simply not built for this sort of hotness. I am classic northern/celtic stock, and I wither in this weather.

Aid donations of ice lollies, frosted margaritas and magical free air conditioning units can be donated via the usual address.

Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to go and put in an extra long day in my (gloriously frigid air conditioned) office.