Another year and another big thank you to Vladimir who removed the remaining cancer and two of my lung lobes eleven years ago to the day.  What an auspicious day too. The day that temperature records were broken - in the days since records have been kept of course. Commentators keep forgetting to make that distinction and I do wonder about the Romans and why they would have bothered to hang around if the weather hadn't been suitable for growing vines.

It was a fraction under 40 degrees in the shade here (pretty well the centre of the country) this afternoon and I thought it might be good to record for posterity what it was like living under that plume of hot air which has shot up from Africa. Of course things have changed since the 1970s when measurement was in Fahrenheit and I have done some conversions in the last few hours, just to get my head around what we were talking about to compare with the 70s.

The heat seemed bad yesterday and I have to admit to being sceptical about the doomsayers' proclamations for today, but the forecasters were entirely right. The heat built from early morning and thank goodness I put my pot plants into the shade a couple of days ago. Some leaves on other shrubs have literally been fried today.

So how did we manage? We are lucky to have blinds in this house so we shut those against the sun, and closed curtains over them in one case, and lived in semi darkness not doing much for the day. Windows all remained closed because it was far cooler inside; just opening the front door you met a wall of heat. 

Psychologically the whole thing was unnerving especially when we watched lunchtime TV and saw the terrible sights of fields on fire with flames running with the wind into housing. People clearly were losing their homes. London emergency services have been having a terrible time, as has pretty well every other region.

I know when I've got three jumpers on and am complaining that the house just isn't warm enough in the middle of the winter to come, it will be difficult to recall today again. It was hotter than anything I've ever encountered before - even when camping during the summer of 1976. The big question now is, if that is going to become the norm, do we order the external shutters and paint the house white now, or do we wait for the next time to see if the prophesies are correct?