How to survive a heatwave

I titled this blog in such a way so that people in twenty years time can google stuff and see exactly what we went through – those who survived the 1976 Heatwave showed no such consideration to us did they! I suppose they could blame the lack of social media…. About that… social media makes EVERYTHING seem a hundred times worse. If you believed everything you read you’d believe that multiple hospitals and surgeries had to close due to the heat, roads melted and swallowed up whole houses, 50,000 lightning strikes hit the UK in ONE HOUR igniting several billion acres of fields…

It wasn’t quite like that, but it was a hot one and there were times when it did appear as if the whole country had gone mad. The heatwave began with the smell of smoke wafting into Hampshire from Salisbury Plain, much of which is a desginated military firing zone. Because of this and unexploded ordinance the risk to people putting out the fire was deemed far greater than those who the smoke was wafting towards. Rightly so! Then there were the ‘central reservation fires…’ The episodes every few days when someone on the motorway would chuck a cigarette end into the centre of the road and ignite the long grasses growing there. There were the threats of hose-pipe bans (South hasn’t had one so far), and the days when being alive just seemed realllllly difficult at thirty degree heat and 28 degree C for sleeping in.

People now talk about the Heatwave and blame it for their inadequacies or inability to do something… Oh… Forgot to take the bin out? It was the heatwave… Driving like an idiot…? Heatwave. And so on. Work carried on however and in my particular air conditioned office (rare around here), I still went to work with a cardigan and scarf. This completely messed up my body temperature when I went outside of course and I spent most evenings alternating between shivering and nearly passing out. But I can’t imagine the working day without air con!

Anyway, I can’t really remember how many days it’s been but we left June in sweltering temperatures and it’s now the 28th July, for some places in the UK there has been 50 consecutive days without rain. We’re not used to that – we’re basically Seattle Lite here!

Oh and the time between the last blog entry and these latest ones…? Blame the heatwave. I do.

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Hello April

It’s April…the middle of April in fact, which means that it’s been over two months since my last blog entry. Shocking… In those two months lots has happened, photos have been taken and time has just sped by so quickly. Is that a symptom of getting older? I feel like it was years since we were on holiday in the USA, when in reality it’s only six months…

So what’s happening…well…we decided to move house! It wasn’t something we ever thought we would be doing this year or maybe even next year, but we started viewing houses just to ‘see’ and the third house was just perfect. I think it’s safe to write about now because we are far far down the line with paperwork, searches, mortgage applications and transfer deeds e.t.c but you just never know what might happen. So fingers crossed… The house we are moving to is only ten minutes away from where we are now, but a different side of town heading towards the village that I grew up in. It’s bigger…four bedrooms, more space and just in the best condition to move into which is good when things are so hectic in other areas of our lives!

I’m halfway through my first year as a Social Work Student, courtesy of my employer who is footing the bill… That has been a challenge in itself, getting back into essay writing, balancing deadlines, going to tutorials…but it’s fun and I love being back on the education scene. We’ve already done a Wedding this year (sneak peak below) at a new location for us which was a great adventure, and we have a couple more lined up but we’re much quieter this year as I want to focus on the fun photography (and studying!)

So there we go…a few photos taken here and there, meadow trips, garden improvements….it still amazes me how in three years we’ve gone from a blank slate of a garden, a small patch of dirt…to an established amount of plants and shrubs. I think that’s one of the sadder things about moving, for us, although we’re moving upwards on the housing ladder, we’re not moving to a brand new house where we can decide how everything is going to be. Regardless though, we’ve done that once – don’t want to go back to the days of snagging and decorating cracks again!

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