On Saturday Heatwave a warm-up for worse to come

DID this column, seven wellcooked days ago, really dare to complain that some of us were feeling a tad too hot? I should have known better and kept my powder dry. We’ve just had a real, airless, baking, and totally-inescapableeven-at-nighttime, scorcher.

As I write, social media is full of the woes of heat. At this very moment some learned professor on Twitter is explaining that if nocturnal temperatures do not fall below 20 C, then it can officially be described as a ‘tropical night’. His tweet says such a thing has only been known six times in Ireland just 120 miles across jellyfish-filled waves from this peninsula, where two of those tropicalnights occurred this week.

It feels like the more southerly Westcountry has had four in a row.

Don’t get me wrong, like most people I enjoy the sunshine – so you won’t hear me complaining about it. Moreover, @weatherbraine (or BBC weatherman David Braine) has just come on Twitter saying it’s going to be cooler and rainy by the time this column hits the streets.

So I’d be a fool to sit here moaning about the heat. However, because this column tends to be about the everyday stuff we countryfolk encounter in our rural lives, I have found this week’s heatwave sufficiently interesting to make a few half-boiled notes…

The most important comes under the heading: Heat Avoidance Techniques For Weary Old Geezers Like Me.

It was my wife who, in this valley at least, came up with a cool answer. She has invented a whole new rural pastime called Stream Strolling…

There’s a clear, rocky, fast-flowing stream in our valley which is only between two and six inches deep. So, without spending half the day in the heat building a dam, you’re hardly going to be plunging deep into its cooling waters. However, Sue took to paddling up a particularly wild section of the stream near our house in her sandals – and now we’ve both done lengthy wet strolls and have found it to be a wonderful, interesting and cooling thing to do. A kind of cold-footed wildlife safari where you see all manner of dragonflies and other delights you’d normally miss up on the footpath.

When I put photos of streamstrolling on social media, a chorus of friends from hot cities like London complained with messages like: “Stop! That looks too inviting! Don’t be mean! There are no cool fast-flowing streams in Shoreditch or Stockwell!”

Yes, I know. We are very, very, lucky.

I knew that even more assuredly the afternoon we had to visit a garage to fix the windscreen-wash system on the car, and then drove on to Porlock Weir to enjoy one of our local beaches. It is a place I’ve known all my life, but never have I seen it looking as wonderfully picture-perfect and generally Cote D Azure-ish as it was on Wednesday afternoon.

There wasn’t a ripple and for once the Bristol Channel looked Mediterranean blue rather than coffee brown. You could even see a good ten feet through its normal murk. We found a quiet bit of the rocky beach and Sue was in the water in a trice. It takes a wimp like me far longer to edge my way agonisingly into the comparative cold of the marine environment - and, just as I was getting there, having submerged the more delicate parts of the anatomy, I came face to face with a jelly-fish the size of a dinner plate.

It soon transpired that it was invading our Somerset shores mobhanded - and having already succumbed to four-and-twenty horsefly bites in the previous 24 hours, I decided against submerging any further. Last time I swam into a herd of jellyfish in Porlock Bay it was an experience similar to running naked through an acre of stinging nettles. Not that I have done such a thing, but I am sure you can imagine what I mean.

Continuing the Wildlife in a Heatwave theme (another heading in my notes) I must just tell you why the car’s windscreen washers had packed in. Because the mice (or whatever they are) around here have been so desperate for water they climbed up through the parked vehicle’s engine department to the very top where they found a soft rubber hose - and by nibbling away a twoinch length they could suck away at the wet stuff to their heart’s content. How very English is that?

The rest of the world is burning or drowning thanks to global warming. There are “fire breathing clouds” in Oregon and Canada; entire valleys have been swept away in not-toodistant Belgium and West Germany; brand new subway systems are underwater in China…

And what does the Mad Dog Englishman do Out in the Midday Sun? He frets over thirsty mice nibbling a rubber hose in the car he uses to go from his comparatively cool Exmoor valley to the nearby beach.

There are times when I watch climate-change mayhem and disaster dominating the news, and I wonder when it’s going to be our turn. I can’t help but feel this week’s heatwave may have been just the merest of warm-up exercises.

Swimming with jellyfish is like running naked through an acre of stinging nettles