Its been extremely warm in Cirencester over the last couple of days, with temperatures getting into the high 20s (celcius). In London, the forecast was expecting 30°c today!
I’ve spent a lot of the weekend in the garden, and on Saturday we even managed to have a BBQ! But life must go on, and for 2 hours this morning I still had to go into college for my Music Tech lesson.
I was thinking earlier this afternoon, that we started this year with temperatures getting below -20°c in rural Scotland – schools were closed, events were cancelled, flights were delayed and the country came to a halt. Just over 4 months later and its too hot to do much.
We are the country that gets laughed at when everything comes to a halt in snowy weather. But we are also the country which continues working throughout high temperatures.
Why don’t we become a bit more continental, and learn to cope with cold weather, so that we can enjoy the warm weather? In Germany (and Austria to a lesser extent), there is a system called Hitzefrei.
Under this system, if the temperature reaches 25°c in the shade by 11am, the schools effectively close and students go home. In the workplace, employees are supposed to make sure that the temperatures do not go above 26°c.
I guess having a system like that in the UK would be the closest we’d ever get to being able to have siestas, like in Greece and other countries with warmer climates.
As I’ve been writing this afternoon, I’ve been listening to ERT’s Δεύτερο Πρόγραμμα 103,7; a Greek music radio station, which is basically the equivalent of Radio 2 (in terms of popularity – not just the fact that its name is Greek for Radio 2). Greek music in this sort of weather doesn’t sound too out of place!
Like the Hitzefrei idea!