Showing posts with label heat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label heat. Show all posts

Saturday, April 10, 2010

It ain't half hot mum

It's been uncommonly warm here this week - I'm not sure exactly, but I think it must have only been something like -4 or -5 today - and whilst that may sound cold, in relative terms it feels decidedly tropical. Today was truly gorgeous, and even though I've been here for some eight months now I'm still struck by the town's beauty, especially on days like today.


However, such mild weather does have a downside. During the winter months there are few, if any, problems with insects and bugs - Little Miss Muffet could have eaten her curds and whey without fear of interruption had she come to work in the North - but when winter starts to give way to spring the flies return with a vengeance, and it's then that you wish that there actually were a few spiders in town.


When I left to go on my walk today I was confronted by a business of flies - did you know that 'business' is the accepted collective noun for flies? - on the inside of my outside door (if that makes sense), and when I returned later in the afternoon I had to swat two intruders that had had the temerity to take up residence in my kitchen. Not as bad as my experience of a couple of years ago though; when I came back North after the summer holidays I entered my house and found the blinds on the dining room window literally covered with flies. We're talking dozens and dozens and dozens. Traditional swatting was never going to work, so I plugged in the vacuum cleaner and simply sucked away the problem. Genius!

Emptying the bag was interesting though.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Blowing hot and cold

What a world of contrasts we live in. It was -32°C here today (-46 with windchill), and I honestly thought that my eyeballs were going to freeze on the way to work this morning. However, both I and my eyes survived, and as I write I'm watching play from the Australian Open tennis in Melbourne (on TV: my eyes, frozen or not, aren't that good), where the on-court temperature is a staggering 61°C (that's over 140°F). Novak Djokovic has just been receiving treatment for heat exhaustion, and has been seeking solace from an ice-pack version of one of those sausage things you that you wear around your neck on the plane.

So, allowing for windchill and 'heatchill' (just what is the equivalent word for an out-of-the-shade temperature?), that's a difference of over 100° (and 16000km) between Inukjuak and Melbourne! I don't think the players would be any better off playing up here though. Holding the raquet would be very difficult in oversize sealskin mittens, and certain parts of the body do tend to shrivel up somewhat in such extreme cold...

"...new balls, please."

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