Eighty in the Shade

As usual, I'm about to sit on the fence with all this weather talk, whilst still nostalgically dipping into my childhood.  I'm not quite sure why people feel the need to get so angry about facts.   

Here's a fact that people get very angry about:  THE WORLD IS WARMING

Go ahead, shout at me now. Get it out of your system.

Here's another fact:  IT HAS BEEN STEADILY WARMING FOR A LONG TIME

Gosh, I bet you are furious now.

I'm not going to give you any more facts because you'll stop reading and won't get to my amusing anecdotes about 1976

You wouldn't think it would be controversial to say something like, the hottest temperature in the UK in 1884 was 87 degrees Fahrenheit (30.5C),  33.8 degrees Celsius in 1976, and 38.7C in 2019. (I checked all of these using met office archive data) Tomorrow, the forecasters believe the temperature could top 40 degrees, which is unheard of in the UK  (FACT - sorry, I wasn't going to give more facts but this is the one that has made people angry)

 People are shouting.

  "We've had hot weather before,"

"What about 1976?" (see above)

"What's wrong with people? It's Summer, what do they expect?"

"Where's our resilience gone?  Keep calm and carry on. Don't let those Germans, I mean forecasters stick it up you."

"What happened to the weather map? It used to be happy and sunny, now they've made it look scary.  It was summer when I was a child and we loved it."

"I makes me so angry, the media have so much to answer to "

"It was hotter than this in Turkey. What's all the fuss?"

Now, this is where I sit on the fence. The media didn't make it get hotter, we have had Summer before, yes they have changed the graphic and maybe it's meant to make you a bit more fearful.  Some people do seem to be a little less resilient and the warnings do seem extreme for most people.  

Personally, I will be fine in 40 degree heat. A bit sticky, maybe but I'm a fully grown woman who drinks lots of water and has a lower than average blood pressure. In fact I'm a bit healthier when it is warmer.  Most people will be like me and therefore have no need to worry. 

My puppy (not fully grown, covered in fur and an idiot that doesn't drink enough) might find it much harder.

Anyone with cardiovascular or renal disease, high blood pressure, diabetes or over 75 could become seriously ill.

A numpty who sits out in it all day, sunbathing and not drinking any water could get all he deserves.  Mad dogs and Englishment etc.  

To try and understand why we are being fed such severe warnings I fell down a humidity rabbit hole.  It's called the wet bulb effect, where if the weather is humid your body can't sweat and so 40 degrees in wet heat is so much more dangerous than 40 degrees in dry heat.  There are parts of the world where very soon the heat and humidity combined will make it impossible to sustain human life.  That's ANY human life and not just the vulnerable.  (Honestly I know you are angry but if you don't want more immigration then maybe you should take climate change seriously)

So before you get really cross with me let me tell you what it was like to be a child in 1976.

It was amazing.  

The sun shone every day, we played outside on our own, while our Mums did the ironing in their bras before greasing themselves up with cooking oil and lying on a towel in the back garden.  We walked down the railway tracks and played on building sites.  We swam in rivers, unsupervised. We crossed the road without looking because cars weren't invented. Gosh, it was great.  And we were young, we didn't even know that we had hips and knees.

You see? I'm on your side. We did all those things and survived. 

I will resist giving you any more facts from the child death archive because you don't need that.  It was just great, that's all that matters.  We were young and free.

1976 was amazing.  Truly.  I remember.  We had a holiday in Guernsey and we swam every day with the landlady of the guesthouse's dog, Pepper. We cycled the whole length of the island and went horse riding and visited the little shell church, wearing jumpers (according to our photos).

That long hot summer of 76.

The best bit, though, was that no one made you have your weekly bath.  In fact, washing, in general was banned. We stunk and we didn't care. The grown ups got a bit tetchy about it. Some people had to queue up to get water from a standpipe.  One of our neighbours had green grass but he was a policeman, so I think that was allowed.  

People would meet in the street and say, "It's another hot one, Fred."

"That's right Mavis, it doesn't look like it'll rain today."

"No. You're right there Fred. Watch out though because I've heard it might get up to eighty in the shade."

Eighty in the shade was the go-to reference for a very hot day.  If it got to Eighty in the shade, which it rarely did, then it was enough to made adults talk about it being too hot to work. 

One last fact to leave you angry. Eighty degrees Fahrenheit is 26.6 degrees Celsius.

It's all fine though.  There's nothing to see here.  You probably aren't going to die tomorrow.