Mercury rising
There is going to be a heatwave starting next week and it’s going to last all summer.
How do I know this, you ask?
Well, it’s quite simple.
Our heating has gone through various morphs, changes and reincarnations. It started off as a very inefficient kitchen range that was fueled with anthracite. After a few decades it was converted to oil. The only problem was that it heated the oven, and at a pinch the hot water supply, but when it came to running even one radiator it was completely inadequate. It had to go.
So we installed radiators all over the kip and moved in a weird yoke that looked like a log burner but was in fact fired by oil, with enough heating capacity to fire up the radiators. One has to remember that in a life dedicated to thwarting those tree huggers, one has to be careful in one’s choice of fuel.
Unfortunately it wasn’t that much of a success. It drank oil like a politician in the Dáil bar, which was fine as a fuck off to the tree huggers but didn’t really heat the house. Like the politician, it didn’t live up to its promises.
Then a rat chewed through one of the underfloor pipes.
So I got my plumber pal out and he replaced the chewed pipe. While he was there I asked him about doing something about the heater that wasn’t. He suggested a proper boiler.
A lovely boiler was duly installed out in the garage, and for the first time we not only had hot radiators, but I could time the yoke to go on and off whenever I wanted. It was also considerably less thirsty.
But there was a problem.
The long room where we normally live had a radiator at one end and the old oil burner at the other which heated the room nicely. But now the burner was redundant [though it still looks quite neat] and the one radiator wasn’t up to the job [a bit like the politician].
Yesterday, after weeks of phonecalls, my plumber friend turned up and we discussed this wee problem. The long and the short of it is that he is going to install a new radiator next week. And having lashed out wads of cash to improve our heating system, I know for a fact that there is going to be a heatwave and we won’t need the heating anyway.
It’s a law that never fails. Buy sunglasses? Say goodbye to sunshine. Buy a raincoat? Prepare for a drought.
So an improved heating system will guarantee a grand hot spell.
You have been warned.
Isn’t a prolonged heatwave in Ireland a bit of a long shot?
Miracles do happen. We might even get a couple of days out of it.
In the UK it only has to go over 12C two days running and the Daily Xenophobe wil SCREAM “THIS UNBEARABLE HEATWAVE, weathermen say hottest *insert month* since 495BC. May says ‘better after Brexit'” and the Fem(nazi-)Mail supplement will offer pages of helpful advice on how to keep pets hydrated with iced lemon tea or kombucha. If it goes over 12C for 3 whole days then the train tracks warp and there are calls for the government to do something to stop all those nasty foreign johnnies coming over here with their families and their funny foreign weather.
More particularly here in Norfolk, they still speak in hushed tones about the HORROR of July 1977 when it didn’t rain for a [i]whole fortnight[/i], the death toll was immense (greater even than that of bar workers before the smoking ban came in). The Army had to come out and install bowsers on every street corner and the smugglers swapped over from ferrying in cocaine and started loading up with bottles of Evian.
They do say more than one girl was persauded to part with her virginity for a glass of Perrier as the temperature SOARED to 19C some days.
Hah! Same here.
Day 1. Sun shining. People still wearing thermal underwear and heavy overcoats. “It won’t last”.
Day 2. Sun still shining. People now wearing next to nothing. “Where can I buy Factor 100 Cream?”
Day 3. Offices close as all staff have thrown a sickie and gone to Brittas Bay. “How many hours have we been stuck on the motorway?”
Day 4. Incessant complaints about the heat. Farmers claiming vast subsidies for lost crops. Temperatures highest since 2016.
Day 5. Rain. “Another fucking miserable summer”.
Good stuff, BBQ on saint Patricks day
Back in 1999 there was a heatwave on Patrick’s Day. I remember trawling the shops looking for charcoal and every single shop was either sold out, or they had failed to order in supplies that early in the year.