Hotheaded

 We live in a nice little house that works very well but has one persisting problem. It is prone to damp and thus to mould. 

Of course this has been exacerbated by the modifications encouraged in the modern world. There's nothing like installing UPVC replacement windows and filling cavity walls with foam for encouraging damp. Both those things have happened to our house.

So in the spring, autumn and winter we have de-humidifiers, one upstairs and one downstairs, that we run extensively to draw out the impressive quantities of water accumulating in the internal atmosphere of our home.

Our pantry off the kitchen had actually fluffy mould like small forests, but we fixed that by a) washing down the walls with bleach, b) not filling it with stuff, and c) changing its window for one that actually opens — and opening it. 

Now we don't get mould.

This summer is part of a wave of hot summers, much like the hot summers we had in the 1970s and again in the mid-80s; and the summer Bernard died, 2004, was shimmering with heat like this year, as well. It has been so hot — by British standards, I mean; I'm only talking about 25^o-30^o Celcius, which is 77^o-86^o Fahrenheit.

So I began to think longingly about getting an air-conditioning unit, even though we do get a lovely through breeze in our home whenever any breeze is blowing.

I looked up on Amazon about small and affordable air-conditioners, and was not filled with enthusiasm by what I read. 

It turns out they are merely fans sitting above a reservoir of water into which you can include ice cubes. So they make a breeze that wafts the moisture from the tank of water around your home as the heat evaporates it.

Wait, what? We spent all autumn, winter and spring sucking the water out of our house and now, just as the sun is drying it out thoroughly, here's a way to put it all back? No thanks.

It made me realise, too that the Hollington stream flowing along behind the houses just beyond the foot of our garden is in effect a giant air-conditioner. Mature trees grow along its banks, the heat evaporates water from it, and the sea breezes we have here make the trees into fans distributing the resulting coolness. I was intrigued and impressed. All for free as well.

So I moved on to thinking, well, if we actually live adjacent to a massive natural air conditioner, and I don't want to make the house damp, so I'm not buying one from Amazon, what can I do to get cool?

Our Grace, who feels the heat terribly, always likes to put a cold can of drink against the back of her neck; it makes her feel better. So I thought about that.

Our brains must be kept at a stable temperature; the human body goes to some lengths to protect the stability of brain temperature. The rest of the body can cope with a much wider fluctuation.

This means that in the winter, you can often keep your whole body warm just by wearing a woolly hat. If you keep your brain warm in cold weather, your body doesn't need to keep sacrificing the heat it has generated to protect the stability of brain temperature. Bald men need beanies.

So I reasoned it should follow that if I wrap an icepack from the freezer in a dish towel, and place it on the base of my throat or the back of my neck, where all the blood vessels and spinal cord etc come near the surface en route to my brain, that would keep my brain temperature stable, which in turn would mean the rest of my body wouldn't have to keep ferrying heat away from my head and making the rest of me too hot.

It's also a lot cheaper than buying an air conditioner off Amazon and getting a mouldy house thrown in for free.

I tried this — with the ice pack — and it does seem to work.