phew what a scorcher!

I like the sun, I like hot weather, not having to wonder if it's going to rain/sleet/be cold during the day because you know that every day is going to be exactly the same: hot and sunny. However, my love of such stable, mundane weather has been severely tested of late.

Friday last week felt somewhat warmer than normal - the wind had dropped to nothing and what little there was was coming out of the south (ie coming over the shallow Caicos Bank where it had no chance of cooling down). By 3pm Friday, I thought I was going to go mad: the coolest place to be was lying on the tiled floor in the bedroom in front of the open door. That night, I finally caved in and put on the AC in Osh's room (where we watched another episode of the new series of Dr Who) and slept in there on the spare bed. Saturday, the temperature climbed even more and hit a scorching 41 degrees Celsius outside. Now, normally that sort of number wouldn't phase me, PROVIDED I have somewhere to escape the heat. And at this lovely house there is no such cool nook or cranny to retreat too. Except the cupboard under the stairs and that is somewhat dark and full of suitcases and squatting in there with a book and a cuppa doesn't befit the glamorous image of living in the West Indies. As it was, I had a BBC World day (watching endless reruns of the same bits of news and Panorama) in Osh's room, venturing out just to eat and drink.

The problem with the house is that it has an uninsulated roof which means that the sun hits the shingles on the roof, burns through them, through the roofing felt and then through the cladding and, having seared through, what 3" of material (I kid you not) it starts heating up the air in the house. We have cathedral ceilings in the main living area - ie they go all the way up to the rafters which is very dramatic and lovely to look at but bugger-all good at keeping you cool. So what with the 15' of hot air trapped at the top of the room, and a ceiling fan which manages to just spread the joy around (ie doesn't actually cool it down) things start to heat up. Add to that the fantastic storage heaters along the west wall of the house.....that is once the sun hits the west wall after midday the concrete blocks start to heat up and they keep that heat, pumping it out well into the night. The prevailing wind runs counter to the orientation of the house (which in many ways scores full marks in the 'form above function' test) so we don't even have the benefit of what little wind there is to ease the pain.

The thermometer in the house read 36 Celsius on Saturday afternoon - the hours between 3 and 4.30 are by far and away the worst! So, Sunday morning Nicky was made to do something about the AC our our bedroom which hitherto had been pouring water onto the floor within 10 minutes of turning it on. Several hours later, the application of some pliers (to modify the drainage system) and a knitting needle (to clean out the drainage holes) and a hammer (to make the metal box in which the AC sits big enough to accommodate the unit (different from being 2/8ths of an inch too small thus forcing it to tilt the wrong way and pour water on the floor)) later we were done and able to freeze ourselves to our hearts' content [monster sentence that, sentence ed.]. That done, we hied ourselves to IGA to buy sandwiches (they do a good sarnie), pizza, ice, beer and watermelon, oh and 2 beach umbrellas and then to the beach. Going to the beach at 1pm is not the best move really BUT it was far cooler on the beach than the house and once in the shade of the brollies was really all very civilized (sorry Dad!).

What is staggering is that whilst we were on the beach munching on sandwiches and slathered in factor 60 SPF (thanks Steph!) and sitting in the shade there was a couple not 10' away lying in the full sun......toasting.....how their brains didn't leak out of their ears is beyond me. The sea was not THAT refreshing on Sunday but was several degrees cooler than the air around us and those degrees become all important in the quest for sanity.

Plans are afoot - or rather awaiting planning permission - to build a roof over the deck all around the house which will help considerably in keeping the sun off the walls (thereby starving the storage heater of its, erm, heat) and Nicky plans to install a super duper AC unit in the main body of the house. You can imagine that with very high ceilings and an open-plan living area that is a heck of a lot of air to cool down. To do this, he has hunted down an AC unit that has the compressor (the thing that converts the hot air to cold - same principle as a fridge) that sits outside away from the house (which means and we don't have to shout above the din of the thing!). However, this is where life gets interesting.

Rather than have cables trailing from the transformer (where the power enters the property) to the current meter and then dig into the concrete path to get the cables to the compressor Nicky decided to install a new meter on the same side as the path as the transformer (thus avoiding digging up the path etc). So he goes to the power company and they come to the house and approve the installation of the new meter but says he has to go to another building to pay a fee to set up the new account. The young man in this office asked where the planning permission was for the new building (assuming that the meter was for a new dwelling....not an unreasonable assumption). Nicky explained that all he was going to do was put down a concrete pad for the compressor to sit on that was going via the new meter. Sorry sir, I can't authorise this without planning permission. So I need to go to Planning to get permission to lay at small concrete pad on my property says Nicky. Yes came the reply. You can imagine that going to planning for something so inconsequential is irksome to say the least. Besides that, Blue Loos (the business that rents out portable toilets and empties septic tanks) has now run out of toilets (they are all in use which is good news) and we need to be able to find around 20 for the music festival in August...which means buying a container full of them very shortly.....which means we have to decide between the new AC unit or a container full of toilets. Herrumph! Still, not sure how we were going to pay for the leccy bill once this new AC was installed anyway! [all very off topic, continuity ed].

Anyway, back to the hot house problem. Nicky pointed out that using the oven was not helping with the heat issue much, so I've now become something of a dab hand at using the BBQ as an oven. We have a gas BBQ - huge great industrial sized thingum with a huge lid that shuts down over the grill. Day before yesterday I cooked Bobotee (some Afrikaans dish - pork meat loaf really) on the BBQ (thanks to the open air cookbook I found on the bookshelf) and spinach and feta pastries yesterday. I put a sheet of tinfoil over the grill and because the flame sits so low down it is just like a gas oven. It sure makes the temperature in the kitchen more bearable. So anyone reading this that has other wizard recipes for cooking on the barbie let me know. My next challenge is quiche on the BBQ and souffle is where we are headed....though that may be a little ambitious. In fact my first challenge with quiche is the pastry - the only ready made stuff here is puff pastry which is useless for quiche (isn't it?) and I can't find lard anywhere and don't like to think how grey and greasy pastry could get trying to make it from scratch in this heat. Answers on a postcard to me please.

Today, it is lovely - it POURED with rain in the middle of the night and I mean full-on tropical rain which has not only replenished the water tank but cooled everything down too. More from the weather girl later.