“If we had the weather, then no one would ever go abroad on holiday!” How many times have you heard that one before? I know I have said it more than once. After last night’s experience, I’ve had a slight change of heart.
The summer of 2018 is the stuff of legends. When we had our sunny Devon holiday back in May, I thought that as usual that would be that. We might get a few decent days here and there, but for most of the time we’d be dodging showers and feeling less than warm. That’s how it usually goes. Not this year, though. June stayed hot and sunny, July got even hotter. We went to Greece at the end of June for a week and for most of the time it was warmer in Bristol than it was over there.
The whole point of going abroad, for me, is usually having access to consistently dry, sunny and warm weather. It’s usually guaranteed. Here, you book a week in the south west and it’s changeable, which is to say crap. In Greece, the summer is hot, sometimes too hot. My temperature preference is around 28c, maybe 30c at a pinch. Over that and it can become unbearable. Many years ago, we landed in Corfu and for one day the temperature peaked at 40c in the shade. It was horrendous. You hear the stories about how people went on holiday and it was 40c+ every day and usually it’s not true. 40c+ is Death Valley standards.
I only work part time these days and it’s awful trying to work normally. It’s hard to sleep at night and if you have asthma there are obvious dangers. I was in the centre of Bristol last night and it was hot and sunny. I’d been reasonably okay until I started walking up a hill parallel with Park Street when asthma struck. I had an unpleasant attack and worse still I had not taken my inhalers. I know how to stay calm and managed to overcome it with breathing exercises. I was pretty sure I knew the reason why.
When I visit a Greek island, the air is usually clear. I take my ventolin inhaler but never need it. Bristol last night stunk to high heaven. Buses – surely the worst polluters – belched out hot fumes, as did cars in the endless gridlock in the laughably named rush hour. My breathing got worse, not helped by an irritating summer cough and cold. I was lucky. I suspect someone with severe asthma could have got in real trouble.
I don’t wish bad weather on anyone having a British holiday in the next month or so but I feel I need some respite, however brief. It is awful seeing the parched fields and gardens, the drying rivers and canals and worst of all hearing about the increasing numbers dying as a direct result of the heat. I want to have a few decent nights’ sleep, I want to breathe easier.
And this mad summer has convinced me that I do want to carry on going abroad in search of quieter, less polluted places. If the air remains as polluted as ours, it’s a near necessity.
