
Grapes, strawberries and figs.
This heat of C37 is now sapping all the words. I can feel them draining down my legs melting onto the floor, seeping down the stairs and ending up, totally shambled around a battery of whirring fans. Yesterday we had the good fortune of locking ourselves up in the comforts of our air-conditioned car. We drove to Canberra to re-new a passport at the Embassy. It took us just seven seconds to run from the coolness of our car, through the C39 throbbing heat in Canberra to the air-conditioned comfort of the Embassy.
The night just passed, was all sweat rock and roll. No passing of cooling breeze, just the pitiful sounds of maddening insects hurling themselves against the fly-screens of the bedroom windows, all opened in foolish anticipation of relief.. Sheets all tangled between clammy legs, like Dutch-wives. (The term ‘Dutch Wife’ or the Indonesian ‘Guling Belanda’ originates from early Dutch colonial times and refers disparagingly to a roll of bedding that is kept between the legs during hot tropical nights. I’ll let you decide on why this roll of bedding became a term of derision. The Dutch in Indonesia were sometimes seen as haughty and their broad-bottomed wives as being cold.
On the way back home we stopped mid-way and had a late lunch. The streets were mostly deserted. The bitumen highway on the way home a simmering black coated Sahara. No fata morgana nor beckoning oasis. What about the garden, the garden? No storm predicted. Those that were predicted in the previous week had eluded our town to such a degree, people were now shaking their fists at the dark but rainless clouds. Coarse oaths were renting the still hot air.
The geraniums defiant though. It just shows that in times of despair one can rely on the geranium. “No good watering now, it will scorch the bay leave trees, oh look at our hydrangeas, all dry and forlorn. They will have to wait till dark, you do the back and I’ll do the front.” Such unity in times of crisis. For dinner we re-heated a magic chicken risotto that Helvi had made some time ago.
The heat did not subside and all we could do was to sit spread-eagled in front of the fans which we had put on the fastest speed possible. One is an evaporative fan. It blows air through water and is supposed to work better. We were beyond caring, and just drank water mixed with a little red wine ( reward), and did nothing much more than look at each other and supress sighing with repeatedly saying to each other; “isn’t it hot?”
What else could we do?
It is hot!
Tags: Bitumen, Canberra, Dutch, Fata Morgana, Finnish, geraniums, Guling Belanda, Heat, Hot, Oasis
January 17, 2017 at 11:15 pm |
Yes, it’s been bleedin’ hot, mate! 40.5 was the top yesterday. But, today, the weather is all cool and innocent, as though yesterday had never happened.
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January 17, 2017 at 11:46 pm |
Yes, I feel like giving the weather a good thrashing and if you see someone running through Bowral brandishing a branch of a birch tree while muttering incoherently, it will be me.
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January 18, 2017 at 2:19 am |
And yet, Yvonne. At 9pm it is predicted to be C:15 AND at 6am tomorrow morning it will be C:13…
I told Helvi I will tuck my beanie underneath the pillow tonight and stoke up the slow combustion.
Crazy weather, but we are getting a blast from the South Pole.
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January 17, 2017 at 11:22 pm |
Thank the goddess for airconditioning. We run ours in the day with “free” solar power. I like the irony in using sunlight for cooling. But we only cool one area at a time – the one where we are.
A year ago I asked the solar people we used whether they thought battery storage (a la Tesla) was a goer. They said “not yet – wait for the prices to come down”. Last week another solar company sent us a letter “Dear Solar Energy Producer ~ let’s talk battery storage”
At least the current current costs only 9c / KwH after 10:00pm. But 49c between 1pm and 8:00pm ! Ouch !
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January 17, 2017 at 11:52 pm |
Oh, don’t get me going on the Tesla. I have been looking at Tesla Car pictures. They seem to be the way to go, but…the price!
We have low electricity use, mainly because we don’t have air-con and use gas for hot water, cooking and heating.
We never had this heat in Bowral since 2010. Now, we just have to stay coo. I have taken my socks off which I did last in December 2001 during a particular hot day.
Even so, I am tempted to try and get solar on our roof. I dream of disconnecting from the grid and stick my tongue out to AGL.
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January 20, 2017 at 7:11 am |
Those bloody Tesla batteries wear out before the payback. There are other technologies like Nickel-Iron, which last decades, but weigh half a tonne, or the new salt water batteries, which are also heavy, but take on a new lease of life with new electrolyte. Lead acid are hopeless, but some old blokes convert them to a type of alkali battery using alum as the electrolyte. They will then bat on for decades.
All of the new lithium based batteries seem wo delicate and short lived!
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January 20, 2017 at 9:12 am
Yes, Big M. The salt storage seems to be ahead on lithium. There is a Tesla car running around here in Bowral. It looks a very nice car.
Another drama in Melbourne. It looks many families’ lives will be ruined by a mentally ill person causing deaths and carnage.
A sad tale. He was known to the police for some time.
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January 17, 2017 at 11:45 pm |
Oh, I do feel for you. It’s warmer here than it should be, but that’s clearly relative. We’re still dozens of degrees cooler than you. It sounds as though you’re suffering through the kind of heat we get in August and September, when the breeze dies, and even the ducks lay around under the trees, panting.
Ah! I just looked — 10 a.m. and 92F/33C. BUT, your humidity is only 24%. My goodness, man. If you were here, it would be 80% humidity, and you’d really be dripping!
But “they” are saying you’ll have cooler and some rain on Thursday and Friday. I’ll cross my fingers for you!
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January 18, 2017 at 12:06 am |
Yes, Linda. The humidity is not high but it does feel clammy. For some time the forecast has been for rain but as the clouds gather and Helvi and I get ready for a wild and tempestuous rain dance, it just glides over and then nothing, just nothing, no rain. Helvi and I stand around agape.
We look forward to the coming Thursday. I love a good thunderstorm with lashes of lightening and water cascading down the gutters and into stormwaters.
I am amazed that you can check on Bowral weather. Is it through Yahoo?
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January 18, 2017 at 12:18 am
No, I just googled “Bowral Australia weather” and got everything from your meteorological bureau to Weather Underground to accuweather to weather.com. Not only that, I know that it’s 11:16 a.m. (or a minute or two later by the time I get done typing) because I put Sydney into my iPad’s clock, and added you to the world map with clocks that tells me so!
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January 18, 2017 at 12:20 am
Hmmm… except the time stamp on my comment says 12:18. Are you in the same time zone as Sydney?
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January 18, 2017 at 1:40 am
Yes, Linda. we are same as Sydney and right now it is 12.40 pm. Yet, on my post above it says 1.40.am. How odd.
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January 18, 2017 at 1:51 am |
In any case, even though it is C37 right now 12.51pm, the temperature expected at 6pm will be an arctic C20.
Great forecast!
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January 18, 2017 at 2:34 am
And at 9:pm C15. But there is more coming… at 6am it will be… C13.
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January 18, 2017 at 4:49 am |
URRK !! I find C30 impossible, and was just beside myself when I encountered C40. I thought we were too far south for these temperatures but evidently not. I don’t know how you survive your climate.
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January 18, 2017 at 8:19 am |
One way I cope is to go through your lovely poetry. Here is one of them and it made me think, smile and forget about the heat.
https://wordpresscom7862wordpresscom.wordpress.com/
Mrs Jones did her home chores
all day as she ran her home
just as her foremothers did.
Mr Jones took all this as his due
for long days at a man’s job
just as his forefathers did.
After more than forty years
he was puzzled when
shopping was not done,
clothes were not washed.
Mrs Jones was puzzled too,
she stared at him blankly
when asked if dinner was ready.
Mr Jones knew what men did
which was not cooking dinner
but only he was cooking meals.
Mrs Jones did her best.
She put the pan on the element,
turned it on, then wandered outside
to stare at the magnolia tree.
She put in the plug
filled the hand basin
with hot water and
was shocked when
the bathroom floor
scalded her feet.
When Mr Jones came home from shopping
the iron was smoking on its board.
He awoke one morning to find
a fire in the pan on the stove.
The doctor filled in forms,
officials met Mrs Jones.
Mr Jones filled in forms
and visited places.
Mrs Jones moved into her rest home room,
they cook dinner for her there.
Mr Jones cooks his own dinner at home
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January 18, 2017 at 8:27 am
Thanks lots Gerard.
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January 18, 2017 at 8:47 am
I thank you for giving us such good poetry.
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January 23, 2017 at 6:31 am
“Because something is happening but you don’t know what it is, do you Mrs Jones?”
Dylan – sort of.
Now where was I?
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January 18, 2017 at 8:39 pm |
Having had our share of heat the past number of months, I sympathize with you now. I just read that 2016 was the hottest year in the history of the planet. I can believe it. Just now, we have welcome rain, but unwelcome wind. I crank the heat up a notch and put the kettle on and it feels just fine.
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January 18, 2017 at 10:32 pm |
This morning we woke up with a 13C. Go and figure? An economic oddity or Climate change? Is the weather nervous about the incoming US president? A climatic Armageddon if nothing is done about a world spewing out its poisons into the atmosphere?
We have gone back to wearing pyjamas, closing the windows and longings for hot chocolate. The maximum for today a nice 19c.
Cranking up the heat sound so nice, Kayti.
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January 18, 2017 at 8:40 pm |
Oh, now that cold weather has arrived, the gas and electric companies announced they are raising the rate 25%. Why not?
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January 18, 2017 at 10:37 pm |
Yes, Kayti. Years ago we did not worry about the energy bills. They were a minor matter because energy was owned by the government and distributed to people at cost. Now, after privatisation, energy is to be exploited to maximum profits. The same in health, education and even jails.
Soon, we will have to be charged for breathing clean air. Oh, hang on, we already are. The free solar energy comes at a price. The jacking up of electricity bills and gas!
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January 18, 2017 at 10:07 pm |
Eek! I was scraping frost from the car windows this morning and dreaming of summer, but I couldn’t cope with that kind of heat.
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January 18, 2017 at 10:42 pm |
Reports from Holland are just as icy. The trees are white and a stillness hangs over the land. It looks beautiful and people feel poetically inspired.
Heat does nothing but sap energy, a listlessness all pervasive with green mould growing around the bookshelves and in corners of public libraries. Old people are kept inside and kind nurses distribute water.
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January 19, 2017 at 2:25 am |
The incoming president’s view that climate change is a hoax may come up and bite him sooner than later. He has an entire lexicon of stupid ideas. We’ll see what happens.
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January 20, 2017 at 12:55 pm |
7C here in London but sunny! 🙂
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January 21, 2017 at 9:55 am |
We had the heater on this morning. it was 12C. The climate is changing.
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January 21, 2017 at 9:16 am |
Would you prefer – 20° Celsius like in some areas here with us in Germany right now? But in summer we may also reach again the 35° or more range, I am quite sure about it … good times for visiting lakes nearby or beaches of the Baltic Sea. Greetings from not too cold Berlin
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January 21, 2017 at 9:57 am |
Yes, In Holland too they are having a winter, yet in Finland it was above c1.
Thank you for your post. Welcome!
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