What About This ******* Weather?

You just happened to be passing!

 

Really can’t believe the scaremongerers at the Met Office are calling this a heatwave. When I were a lad I lived through the July 2022 heatwave and this is a like a faintly mild spell by comparison.

 

People don’t know they’re born. When I was a lad, mam would make us sit in greenhouse all afternoon on a sunny day and that was if we were lucky. If we was bad, we’d have to put our heads in the oven till the roast potatoes were done.

 

That were nothing! After a hard day's work at the steel mill scooping out molten metal into buckets with our hands, we'd go home and mam would feed us lava for us tea. If we were lucky...

 

Doom porn
If you live in the Northern dependences like Morecambe or Scotland . It's raining.
It's just not raining down here .
It will and it will resolve itself
Tis why the water board don't care
Not saying it is right
Just telling it like it is

 

This is a really interesting graphic.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/stunning-graphic-earths-temperature-22000-years/

It does seem to counter the 'we've always had hot summers so it'll be fine' argument. In my work I've spoken to a dozen or so climate scientists over the past couple of years to talk about the impact of the climate on endurance sports events and what they say is both fascinating and frightening. Now, maybe they are crying wolf and they'll be proved wrong but if they are not wrong the future is bleak.

It's also not currently raining in Scotland.

 

Lava? We’d have bitten your melting hand off for lava. We had to get by on thrupney ha’penny of atomic waste from fella who used to show up in a radioactive van. Then the area’d be cordoned off and the nuclear police would take us away to be decontaminated.

 

Wow !
Cos "Scotland" is a big place
Have a word with your brain , fella .

 

Whenever Im in a quandry about how to handle the ensuing challenges of an ever changing world, I turn to my mentor and guru on all things esoteric and spiritual.

Paulie Walnuts Guide to a Happy Lifestyle - Tip #4

(in a New Joisey accent) "In hot weather I advise to sit outside in a treeless, concrete dominated street side cafe, wearing a thick leather fur skinned jacket with a foil reflector to make sure you get the under neck regions equally tanned. Never waste a good tanning opportunity especially when vitamin D levels are low from spending all day in windowless strip bars or night shifts burying corpses in woods upstate"

 

It will be interesting to see the minimum temperature last night for London. Wouldn’t surprise me if it was the warmest night this year. Today wasn’t much hotter than the previous three days, but last night felt especially warm - hardly a breeze was felt through my open bedroom window, and I had to sleep in just my boxers with just a duvet over my legs before I felt comfortable.

Wonder what the record minimum is for London or any part of the UK? Paris dropped down to 25 C one summer, which must be especially uncomfortable in a city that doesn’t use air conditioning widely.

 

No chance, last month will surely have surpassed it given daytime highs were +5c.

 

Coño tu madre!

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/forecast/d7b9duq8h#?date=2022-08-15

Today a mild 33C in Cam. Tomorrow 33 also. Tuesday 34, then Wed-Sat 35. Next week 34C. And the week after that and the month after that and the month after that.

Things get a bit chilly in Dec and Jan, our winter. Daytime can drop as low as 23C and sometimes in the early mornings it plummets to 15C or so. Cubans shiver and bring out little denim jackets from the back of 'el closet'.

 

I bet this doesn't age well .

 

You’re right, though with a low of 18.2 it was one of the warmest nights of this month - must have been well into the small hours or around daybreak, because where I live it remained in the 20s until way past midnight. Tonight looks to be warmer still (perhaps I’ll put a couple of ice trays until the bedclothes in advance!) but not the warmest of the year.

 

So Thames Water - who haven't built a new reservoir since the 1970s, loose gallons of water every day through their leaky pipes, and continue to pollute our precious chalk streams, expect me to let my herbaceous borders frazzle or break my back yomping watering cans up and down the garden, do they? Well they can **** off! DEFY THE BAN! SAVE YOUR SHRUBS. KEEP HOSING!

 

As long as the taps or the rivers don't run dry...
I read somewhere that c40% of the water they "distribute" is lost to leaks. Is that right ?
Yesterday was bloody irritating. NW London gets flooding and our parched lawns and borders in Tring barely saw a raindrop. I spent an hour this morning watering key stuff around the garden with a hose. Next week I'll be spending twice as long filling buckets and watering cans. "persistant hose users could be fined up to £1000". That sounds like you get a few warnings first so I'm tempted but it will turn households against eachother as some religiously stick to the ban and see their gardens wither while watching their neighbours just ignore the ban.

 

People who use hoses and not watering cans are just lazy gits. Get some exercise!

 

I had a massive leak once (the bill was suddenly £800 for a quarter) they weren’t interested in collecting the money, they just wanted the leak fixed so it shows how much of a problem it is.

 

I'd normally agree but an hour of hose watering specific plants/bushes every few days would take 2 hrs with cans and buckets ! Still, after next Tuesday, that's what it will have to be.

 

Too much caffeine ?

 

Well, I know you have something like a 10 acre garden, so I have some sympathy.

 

Bigger than average but nothing close to that, but I do have a lot of young trees and shrubs and being on the top of a hill our soil dries out very quickly. Have lost a couple of trees/bushes despite religiously watering when I can....

 

I was going to say, tongue out of cheek for a moment, not to waste your time with established shrubs and trees, which should (mainly) be absolutely fine. But yes, if there are newly planted or immature ones, it's worth the effort. Any containers, too.

 

Meister Manor has a couple of 100L water butts to collect precious rain water from the slates on the south wing. These are duly decanted to 3 old dustbins as reserve storage.

Yesterday's downpour filled both water butts quite quickly but unfortunately Wednesday is a work day so I couldn't move the resource across before the rain stopped and hence I could have collected more.
I think I may need to extend capabilities going forward as this 440L total capacity was exhausted a good month ago.

The recent weather has decimated the runner bean crop, however I have a bumper harvest of chillis to look forward to.

 

Touch wood my runner beans are fine.

 

As an aside I've been hearing about people waking up this morning with lots of lea-bites on their feet and lower legs. Appears that yesterday's storms and massive change in humidity woke-up flea eggs that ISTR can remain dormant for years...

 

Sounds like all people get are warnings:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/c...-paid-fine-breaking-hosepipe-ban-admit-water/

No one fined in 31 years since the legal power was introduced.

 

I'm not eating them after you've touched your wood.

 

The fact that they encourage neighbours to rat on each other just about sums up what a diabolical bunch of shysters the water companies are

 

Meister boasting about the size of his butt.

 

Double Butt.

 

Anyone any idea what this wet runny stuff is that's all over the windows and garden ?
First real rain here for 2 months ....and the test match starts away from the rain in Manchester today so hopefully a full days play. Perfect weather combo.

 

First day of the Thames water hosepipe ban.

Meister Manor is supplied by Affinity. I would expect rainwater storage to be at capacity when I return home from work.

Putting off nipping out to get some milk and the paper though as it looks a little moist out there.

 

Was yesterday actually but close ! Good news as from now on it will be buckets and watering cans and lots of time and effort.