Heatwave is a sign that action is needed

SOME like it hot. Certainly Marilyn Monroe did in the 1959 movie of that name, but that was then and this is now.

- Martin Hesp

We have a different kind of hot these days - and I am sitting in it as I write, with a panting lurcher at my feet. Poor old Finn. We're in the coolest room in the house, but when you have a fur coat permanently attached to your body, life can become very warm indeed.

Mind you, he is a dog with very little brain. An hour after I opened the back door this morning I went out into the garden to find him sitting in the hottest place available. Idiot. I made him come inside, and he's been panting like a train ever since, despite cool wet towels and all the rest of it.

At least living in a damp Westcountry cottage has an upside. In winter it's not good. Black mould grows on the walls and you spend a fortune heating the place. But the slate-like shillet, which forms the thick walls of this house, holds a secret that is only revealed in extreme heat... The soft stone soaks up the damp and, in hot weather, that dampness slowly evaporates, which has the effect of cooling the interior.

When I was a boy, we had a camping fridge that worked on the same principle. It was made of a lightweight porous substance and it had a shallow dish in its roof into which you poured water. This soaked into the walls, the water slowly evaporated, and the inside of the little fridge remained cool enough to store milk and the like.