jameshurrell.co.uk

I was just reading a post on my friend Nik’s website with regard to the current heatwave in Europe (see this article for more details) and I decided to have a look at the max temp for Paris today: it reached 37C at Orly airport - abominably hot for a large city!

I then took a look at the satellite pictures taken today and saw that some gigantic storms had broken out over northern France - click the thumbnail below to see an image taken at 1745 BST (although be warned that it is 600Kb in size).

Source: NOAA Archive Bern, Switzerland

Well, my ageing Peugeot 106 has got another problem. This time it’s the cooling system and I think the radiator has a  tiny hole in it: last night at my sister’s I noticed a small puddle of coolant underneath the car - not a huge puddle, but enought to warrant a look. Sure enough there were the tell tale drips from somewhere along the bottom of the radiator :(. Juliet had noticed this the other day when she was driving it to work, so I was on the look out for it, but it’s still a bummer. Anyway, my friendly mechanic will hopefully be able to sort it soon. In the meantime I’m resorting to the bus to work.

Another of my weather related babble. Today was the hottest July day in the UK since records began - Charlwood, near Gatwick Airport, at 14:32, reached 36.3 deg C or 97.3 deg F in old money! Many other places around the UK reached 35 deg C (courtesey of metoffice.gov.uk):

It was fairly unbearable in the office today - although spare a thought for my French colleagues across the channel who were sweltering in a temperature of 37 deg C this afternoon. I have visions of 100 of my colleagues crammed into the server room - the only air conditioned place in the building!

Temperature at 21:15 at home (click to enlarge):

Had a very pleasant evening at our friend’s Zoe and Stuart on Saturday night. They recently announced their engagement, and it was great to celebrate with them!

Congratulations to you both, and Happy Birthday to Zoe for Wednesday.

Back from Paris late last night - Juliet picked me up at midnight from Wolverhampton train station. The return journey was just as smooth as the outward trip, in fact I discovered that by some fluke I had booked a first class ticket for the return leg on the Eurostar (I hadn’t realised until I got into the train!) and it was very pleasant indeed being waited on and slowly getting sozzled on the free wine - highly recommend it! The Gare du Nord was pretty busy though - a lot of people were heading off to make the most of the long weekend in France to celebrate the French National day today.

Talking of the 14th July, today is Rich’s 30th Birthday! Happy Birthday Rich.

Tonight Juliet and I are off to Chepstow with some friends to go to the horse races - this will be a first for both of us!