Miscellaneous thoughts about anything, either topical or not, that arouses my interest.
Feeling uncomfortably hot I called on the latent heat of evaporation of water. I took off my shirt and wet my skin with a flannel soaked in cold water. I did not dry myself and did not replace my shirt, just letting the water evaporate. I cooled down in a few seconds. Once body heat had dried me, I applied the flannel again.
Why didn't the media recommend this simple treatment?
I still wear a face mask when shopping but on recent shopping expeditions I noticed that very few others have worn them. During the lockdown I never had a cold and realised that promiscuous gregariousness spreads many other diseases as well as covid19. A permanent lockdown would be impractical but wearing a face mask in crowded places is no burden. Do some people want to spread infection?
In my childhood the occasional very hot day was welcomed with joy - at least joy on the part of my parents; I had some revervations. The parents revelled in the large numbers hot weather scored on the Fahrenheit scale and welcomed the opportunity to acquire sunburn - in those days considered a badge of honour proving that one had survived a challenging encounter with the elements. With no refrigerator milk went sour and butter melted, but we bore those afflictions with fortitude. Father converted the sour milk into cheese by straining it through one of his socks which he suspended from the tap over the kitchen sink.
Today I was very pleased that the day started cloudy, and went shopping earlier than usual to avoid the heat. The television shows maps coloured according to the expected levels of high temperatures, ranging from the merely worrying to a possible emergency. We no longer boast about sunburn!
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