It's early September, and it's HOT.
So hot, in fact, that my son is having trouble sleeping.
When I say hot, it's actually reasonably warm, but it's humid, which is possibly the worst form of weather known to anyone in the UK. You see, us Brits like the weather, because we can complain about it. We're geared up for fifty weeks of the year complaining about the cold and the rain, and we can't wait for the handful of days when we're able to say "Isn't it warm?!? I like it warm, but not this warm".
The news lives for the weather. It's great. Heatwave? Roads will start melting, and train tracks will deform. Cold? Roads are blocked by three inches of snow, and train lines ice up. Wind? Trees block roads and train lines (you get the pattern - essentially we want to know how the weather will inconvenience our travel plans).
Anyway, it's humid, or muggy, or close, or whatever you choose to call it.
Last night about 2am, our son woke up, declaring "My bed is broken, it's too hot" (to be fair he's only six so you can forgive him for not understanding that beds don't actually have an integrated air conditioning system), so we went on an epic journey trying to sleep everywhere in the house, including:
- The spare bed
- The living room sofa (after I'd gone round and turned off all of the plugs in the room powering the standby lights of various bits of electronic entertainment)
- The playroom sofa
- The carpet on the first floor landing
I actually have a great deal of experience sleeping in places that aren't my normal bed (that sounds wrong), when I lived with my parents there were many months that I slept on the sofa, generally because I wanted to watch a video or DVD and fell asleep watching it - pro-tip if you want the feeling of deja vu, fall asleep while watching the 24 hour news channel, you wake it convinced that you dreamt about all of the "breaking news" they cover over breakfast.
I've also slept on a jeep safari, in a submarine, floors, in far too many cars to count, the list goes on. However my son hasn't gained the same level of experience, though he is learning quickly.
After trying these many places we found that his bed had been uninhabited for so long that it had actually cooled down, so he happily went off to sleep.
Before I finish, I made this a while back, but can't remember ever posting it. So here it is.