Creature of Mad Enthusiasms

Well it's not that AC is considered a luxury so much as it hasn't been necessary until the last couple of decades - and since most British houses (and offices) are pretty old, installing AC is an expense few people can afford - and, quite often, hard to achieve.

I do have a fan - although that's only so much help, alas.

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When I'm at home, I have wet hair and either a cold wet towel around my neck or as little clothing as I can get away with. It helps...

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Oh yes, I often sit here in the barest minimum of clothing, and sleep wearing even less...

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My boss says that when she was a kid she and her brothers would sleep in the same big bed with a fan blowing across a block of ice. (This was back when there was an ice man who delivered for the icebox, now an electric refrigerator.) They had to empty the drip pan in the middle of the night, but you can still get ice in big bags... or is that just here?

A British host once cried, "Oh, I forgot we had an American coming-- I didn't make ice!" I assured her that in Sussex in May I could probably live without it.

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I've never heard of ice in bin bags! I wish I had a way to make a large block of ice, but my tiny refrigerator has an even tinier ice box, so that's not possible!

Well we had a hot spell in May this year - and SE England generally gets the hottest temps (just as it often gets the coldest of southern England).

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In the US, markets and 7-11 corner stores sell ice cubes in plastic bags, five or ten pounds' weight, I think. They've been partly melted during transport so the cubes are all half-melted together, and have to be chipped apart with force. Used mostly to fill coolers to chill drinks in bottles and cans for parties. I used one to temporarily preserve a road-killed bobcat, but that's just me. (Nea: not our Bobcat-- an actual bobcat, Lynx rufus, picked up on I-66 in Virginia.) If I were outdoors right now, where it's 92°F or 33°C (and that's an improvement from the past three days), sitting on a bag of ice would feel good too.

Our definitions of "hot spell" vary. One May day in Sussex a native remarked, "Me clothes are stickin' to me!" I was perfectly comfortable in long sleeves and a light jacket.

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Buy bags of ice cubes? Okay... I don't think I've ever seen those in my local stores...

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Well, you know the stereotypes of Americans and ice! I don't recall ever seeing any ice randomly for sale there either, but if you ever find it, now you know how to make a swamp cooler.

If you can find a styrofoam cooler (it can't be plastic) and a science supply place, you could do the same setup with dry ice. There's got to be dry ice around, although it would be from a specialty store and I can't guarantee it wouldn't be too expensive.

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I presume there's somewhere that supplies the Oxford University with dry ice - but I would guess it's prohibitively expense for someone on such a low income as mine.

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I was about to ETA and say "now I know I'm being a bit silly and it's probably way too expensive"... but you never know when knowledge might be useful. (CSI used the same concept for a murder mystery once. No, twice. Once a guy electrocuted himself on the melting ice and a fan with a poorly insulated cord, and once there was a case where a sleeper had his head too near dry ice and smothered. So even if you can't cool off your flat, maybe you can snuff someone in a story in a new and unusual way! A Law and Order story that isn't a murder but suicide-by-stupidity or something.)

Edited Date: 2010-07-09 10:51 am (UTC)

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LOL If I go back to writing fanfic, I'll keep it in mind...

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I bet you will in a few years, when your climate is more like ours and ours is more like... Hell. Humid Hell.

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Ugh, don't.

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The Guardian says, "The highest temperature reached so far this year was 30.9C (87.6F) in Gravesend, Kent, on June 27."

If it were that LOW here, we'd almost be dancing in the streets. If it weren't for the killer humidity.

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They were that low last year, IIRC, and we all found it refreshing.

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redpanda13 says, it's sold at stores here. Put the ice under a fan, let it melt and the fan spread the vapor, and you've got yourself ~~redneck air conditioning~~ a swamp cooler.

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