{"id":4163,"date":"2026-06-28T18:10:53","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T17:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.janelaverick.com\/?p=4163"},"modified":"2026-06-28T18:10:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T17:10:53","slug":"the-heat-the-sand-the-camels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.janelaverick.com\/?p=4163","title":{"rendered":"The heat, the sand, the camels!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Flickr Tags: humour<\/a><\/div>\n

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Google Tags: humour<\/a><\/div>\n

Actually, no camels but there was a heatwave.  It got up to 37 in my craft room with no one to blame, as I am the genius who designed floor to ceiling windows in a small south-facing room.<\/font><\/p>\n

I decamped to the dining room, which has no windows and tried to work, I have some dolls waiting patiently.  The illustrations of Venice will return when the dolls are dressed.<\/font><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, has anyone discovered how to survive in a heatwave?<\/font><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know where you are reading this in the world, could be a place where 37 is a normal temperature and you\u2019re wondering what all the fuss is about.  In 2008, when we were in Australia, meeting the new rellies, we visited a zoo on a day where the thermometer hit 40.  It was definitely a bit warm.<\/font><\/p>\n

The problems arise, not when you are a visitor and can return to your normal conditions, but when your normal conditions have flitted off elsewhere leaving you in the lurch.<\/font><\/p>\n

Given the global nature of the Internet, I wondered if any readers had routinely encountered the following problems and knew what to do.<\/font><\/p>\n

How to put moisturiser on your face in a heatwave. <\/strong>I\u2019m asking because I discovered that it slides off on a tide of sweat as fast as you put it on.  I didn\u2019t even bother with the layer that shrinks your pores.  If you closed your pores up like the skin on a cheese, you\u2019d be in trouble in a heatwave, expanding like a balloon.  Perhaps we should ask the former Prince known as Andrew, on televisual record as saying he never sweats, quite how he copes in a heatwave.<\/font><\/p>\n

How to get to sleep in a heatwave.  <\/strong>I am the one with the south-facing bedroom, which, with three windows, got up to 39 degrees with ease.  I tried a rota of opening and closing curtains, windows and doors to deny entry to the extreme warmth.  I enlisted the aid of my greatest fan, which is floor standing and rechargeable.  I went to bed with my hair wet, dry, tied up and bunched.  I sought sleep on my side, my back, my front, hanging over the edge, propped up, flat and spreadeagled.  If one was really, really rich, one could afford flunkies to hold up one\u2019s massive tits, a mixed blessing of age and genetics, entirely natural and nothing like those famed for their abundance such as Dolly Parton and Kim Kardashian, who must be struggling, at least, and fan underneath, which leads me to the next dilemma..<\/font><\/p>\n

How to put a bra on in a heatwave.<\/strong>   It took the thick end of an hour. Any strap which did not twist, rolled, taking adjacent fastenings with it.  At one point I had both arms trapped, no boobs in, and three straps like maypoles and thought I might have to live the rest of my life like that, which would have caused a stir in the supermarket, even if I was just popping in, or out, for bottled water.  The OH came to me at this point for help, having his tee-shirt rolled up his back and stuck there.  I rescued him with my teeth to cries of \u2018ama, oh damn, ama, no, try again, amateur!\u2019<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Who sells expanding fridges?  <\/strong>Day two of the heatwave, no one has been shopping seriously yet but there is not one square inch of fridge space left because anything left out is either mouldy or shrivelled instantly.  What is needed is a fridge with a rubber casing that will expand as you stuff stuff in with all the other stuff.  If there were to be an explosion of multiple chilly things towards the fridge opener, this would be welcome on the hottest day, I feel.  I essayed a tentative trip to the supermarket, finding the ice cream aisle strangely shopper-free, which was explained almost instantly by the complete lack of ice cream, which void had been filled by an engineer in orange overalls, standing waist deep in one of the chest freezers, on his phone, presumably to someone who knew what to do, if anything.  If climate change continues, people will be looking to move to a fridge with house attached.  Talking of which..<\/font><\/p>\n

How to adapt your house for a heatwave.  <\/strong>Which should really be how to adapt your house for climate change.  The unwise, upon prompting from the government, festooned their houses with solar panels and discovered subsequently that the energy required to shuffle the resultant solar power energy to the National Grid was going to cost quite a bit more than the revenue from the energy created.  No one yet has discovered the cost of replacing a roof which has caved in from the weight of solar panels balanced on the elderly tiles, but I feel it will come with time.  Then there are the wonderful winter heat pumps which require a massive white box, coming in the one colour carefully designed to show the dirt, to be fastened to whichever side of the building is most visible from the road, except in houses with very nice gardens, in which case it will fill the gazebo.<\/font><\/p>\n

How to have romantic relations in 30 degrees and above.<\/strong>  If you have worked out how to do this, for example, if you are an actual circus acrobat or have discovered a practical use for an indoor parachute harness, please don\u2019t tell me.  My head is full of disturbing images as it is, given the current political situation.<\/font><\/p>\n

How to stop your bare feet sticking to your sandals.<\/strong>  If you put foot cream on them, you will slide, toes, bunions, instep and all, very painfully out of the front and be wearing your sandals round your ankles, with your bare, scraped feet on the tarmac.  This has never been advertised in the fashion press as \u2018A Look\u2019.  If you just inch your bare sweaty feet into the open sandal, one millimetre at a time, they will reach the personalised, foot-shaped depression and instantly lock in. You will be stuck until the first frosts.<\/font><\/p>\n

How to rescue your expensive new leather sandals that you managed to ease off your feet in a cold shower, that now look like the old rag you scrub the car wheels with.<\/strong>  Sandal manufacturers know all about this, which is why sandals containing just enough leather to make a biker jacket for a bean, cost over \u00a3100.  They know you\u2019ll be back for another mortgage-worthy purchase, or be tramping the pavements on your own home-grown callouses.<\/font><\/p>\n

Let us not talk about other underwear.<\/strong>  Three changes a day, minimum.  I wish I had shares in Marks and Spencer.  Not for the little lace frilly things, or indeed little lace frilly thongs, which you would be able to thread through a needle with quite a small eye after half an hour of wear.  No. I am talking about the full body, solid cotton efforts that encase all the sweaty bits, which are all the bits, with enough absorbency to get to the two hour wear mark and that\u2019s only in privacy, sitting quietly at home.  In public, such as staff meeting, company summer do on the lawn, parent\u2019s evening, you\u2019re on your own.<\/font><\/p>\n

Hair. <\/strong>The need to wash your hair in the shower three times a day just to stop the sweat trickling out of it into your eyes, making your mascara run until you are completely panda-ed and blind as a bat, is I feel, not something that John Frieda has really tackled.  No amount of conditioner, anti-frizzy, caffeine, cough mixture additive or anything else in any brand at all has addressed this problem.  You can squirt your hair with Australian oil, middle Eastern clarified butter, or basic chip fat, nothing makes any difference.  Out of the shower it is instantly drier than the Gobi desert before you can even get a towel on it and sticking out at a ninety degree angle to every last follicle, except the ones adjacent to your neck which will lie flat as if superglued and sweat down your back, making your bra, which you had been trying to get on, hopefully, as wet as an open topped tourer, with sponge seating, in a car wash.<\/font><\/p>\n

How to sit on boiling car seats, in shorts.  <\/strong>I wish I knew.  I had to take the OH to an appointment.  I  just about peeled my legs off when I got back without requiring a skin graft but it was a close-run thing.  Soothing skin gel does not stay where you put it, either.  In an instant it was soaking into my ankle sandals.<\/font><\/p>\n

If climate change continues we will have to adapt very quickly.  The human of the future will have short hollow hair all over that squirts sweat six inches from the body in all directions.  Once procreation ceases we will all have to become nocturnal with huge eyes, like bush babies, and the new trillionaires will be fridge magnets.<\/font><\/p>\n

No sorry, fridge magnates.  (Blame the heat, I do.)<\/font><\/p>\n

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Flickr Tags: humour Google Tags: humour Actually, no camels but there was a heatwave.  It got up to 37 in my craft room with no one to blame, as I am the genius who designed floor to ceiling windows in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-artists"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t