Air-conditioning, Bank Holidays, half-term, decorating, and wargaming

One of the things that some Americans complain about when they visit the UK is the lack of air-conditioning. Now, for most of the year the UK never seems to get hot enough to warrant the wholesale use of air-conditioning (the average summer temperature reaches a maximum of 19°C/14°F in July) but every so often it does get hot, especially when the temperature exceeds the average by some margin.

For example, what has been described as a 'heat wave' hit our part of the UK last Friday, and by midday on Monday it was 30°C/85°F, By 2.00pm it was 33°C/91°F ... and the best thing that we could have done was to keep the curtains and blinds closed, switch on our tower fans, and do as little as possible. What made this more unusual that normal was the fact that last weekend was a Bank Holiday and this week is a school halft-term holiday ... both of which can usually be a guarantee of poor weather!

This would have normally resulted in most people – including Sue and I – just slowing down and trying to keep cool ... but we had already decided to redecorate our main bedroom and replace the furniture. Now, to do this, first we have to empty our spare bedroom (i.e. pack up all the clothes and pass the furniture onto Emmaus a charity that supports the homeless) so that we can then move everything from our main bedroom into it. In other words, the whole operation is a sort of 'Towers of Hanoi' puzzle.

Except for the furniture, everything that was in the spare bedroom has been crated up and moved upstairs to our former home office, with the inevitable overspill being stored in my toy/wargame room. The latter has therefore impacted on my ability to do any wargaming up there. Mind you, it's so hot in the room at present that I doubt that I could have done much in that room anyway! (The room is in our loft conversion and has both a black roof and enough insulation to keep it warm in cold weather ... which makes it very hot during the current 'heat wave'.)

The plan is to get everything back to normal by the middle of July, so until then, I'll probably be writing about the hobby rather than doing much actual wargaming ... unless – of course – I can come up with a cunning plan to bring my tabletop battles downstairs ...