Blowing hot and cold

On Friday, the temperature dropped by 10 degrees and stayed like it all through the weekend. This dramatic fall opened up a whole new world that I’d just about forgotten – the world of ‘outside’. It has been bliss. On Saturday morning, with the temperature standing at 30 degrees, we went for a bike ride, played tennis for a whole hour, and sat in the garden for two hours. We had lunch in the pub, sitting outside. And on Saturday afternoon, the water in the swimming pool actually felt cold, instead of being at bath temperature like it normally is. And then after tea, we sat outside again, a cool, dark, peaceful evening, with nothing to break the silence except the chirping of the crickets in the trees, the croaking of the frogs by the pond, and the roar of the Boeing 737s skimming the roof on their final descent towards Hongqiao airport (4 miles away and busier than Manchester). Heaven.

Apparently though, with it still being August, this is just a blip, and temperatures are back up to normal today. Still, come September when temperatures really do drop into the high twenties, we should have at least three months before we need to figure out how to make the air conditioning units blow hot air.