Things You Do When It's Very Hot

1. Have a cold shower
2. Wonder why, even when you're boiling, some instinct makes getting straight into a cold shower not an entirely pleasant prospect.
3. Have another cold shower
4. Decide that perhaps that instinct isn't really all that strong and have a third cold shower
5. Look up temperatures since 1973 on the Internet to try to work out whether this is global warming.
6. Feel amazed by how difficult it is to see any pattern in temperatures
7. Feel envious of those who lived through the summer of 2009 when the temperature never rose above 25
8. Feel surprised that husband, who over a 30-year marriage has never provided a trace of evidence that he was aware of anything emanating from California in the early seventies, knows the Joni Mitchell song that contains the phrase 'the wind is in from Africa'
9. Have another cold shower
10. Put wet washing over fan in hope the air will blow through it, becoming cold via the wetness of the clothing
11. Discover that that doesn't work
12. Think the Joni Mitchell song that contains the phrase 'the wind is in from Africa' is a pretty song, but prettier in the original version than the one currently on offer in your apartment
13. Put wet washing over your head and then sit facing fan - find that that does work as a cooling method but makes reading very hard.
14. Run a cold bath and in attempting to get into it realise that maybe instinct is stronger than you think after all.
15. Empty bath and have another cold shower.
16. Look up long term weather forecast
17. Begin to wonder if perhaps the Joni Mitchell song that contains the phrase 'the wind is in from Africa' is not actually pretty after all
18. Try to decide whether the pleasure of being at the pool is worth the effort of going through the hot streets to get to the pool.
19. Decide it probably isn't, especially as everyone else in the city is almost certainly there already.
20. Look up trains to Iceland
21. Look up weather in Iceland.
22. Start to regret the fact that Joni Mitchell ever wrote the song that contains the phrase 'the wind is in from Africa'
23. Look up hotels in Iceland. Realise you don't have enough money or time to go there.
24. Have another cold shower.
25. Decide that being hot is quite nice really, provided you have access to a cold shower.
26. Realise that you will scream if you ever hear that Joni Mitchell song that contains the phrase 'the wind is in from Africa' again, especially if sung by your husband.
27. Scream
28. Have another cold shower
29. Decide to write a blog post so that other people will at least feel sorry for you