Summertime

And the living is sweaty, but it can be made easier

I love the long summer holidays, but I find the heat very challenging, to say the least. I have form in surviving uncomfortable heat, a crucial part of it being that it is absolutely imperative to swear up and down that I will never complain about the cold again. But I have a feeling this is what I do in the winter, while complaining about the cold and swearing I’ll never complain about the heat. In any case, I feel as though I have have finally got the temperature inside my apartment right, with a combination of air-con and Dyson fans, and by strategically keeping under cover between 9:30 in the morning and 6:30 in the evening, I can keep cool during the day¹. My main weapon against the heat is textiles, though. Linen and cotton, they keep me sane. My summer wardrobe continues to stand me in good stead, particularly with the specific challenges of this summer; effortless dressing in the truest sense. And my summer bed wardrobe is giving me joy as well.

Much as I appreciate a fat, cosy, feathery winter bed, there’s something deeply appealing about a fresh, cool summer bed as well. In between the discarding of the duvet and the embracing of the linen and cotton, there’s a middle month or so when I have a sheet and a soft, thinly-padded quilt, for when you wake up feeling oppressed under the duvet, but still need to feel as though you can pull the covers up. Now it’s peak summer, I have a linen sheet and a cotton quilt; some nights they are pushed down to the bottom of the bed all night, and some mornings I wake up finding I have pulled them up around my shoulders. I could even do without the quilt, probably, but somehow the bed doesn’t seem dressed without it. And this is such a good one, which I discovered years ago: the weave of the quilt creates a large almost waffle texture which makes it feel as though it’s padded, but it is pure cotton. This summer, I have been ironing my sheets when they are damp from the washing machine. The longer they are on the bed, the more creased they get, but I don’t mind that at all: I just love it when they look crisp and cool the day I change the sheets (the picture below is when they are feeling more lived in).

Despite the fact I have no garden and try to stay inside during the day, I do sometimes fantasise about just sitting in a bath outside all day.I think one of these would do nicely. They also do them in green. One day when I have a garden I will aim to have one of these. I’d just fill it with cold water in the morning and lie in it reading all day. I mean yes, obviously a charming enamel roll top blah blah blah, but there is something very pleasing about the chunky practicality of this one, made to be left outside in all weathers (there is actually a cover available too), plastic put to good use. I did find a cheaper version but it does look very much like taking a bath in a laundry basket, so maybe not quite as appealing.

And speaking of plastic, I have been hankering after the very much not-plastic Aarke Carbonator for years. I love fizzy water, and I hated lugging plastic bottles of it up three flights of stairs to my house, so a carbonator seemed like a good deal, and I wouldn’t have thought twice about it except that we can get free drinking water right next to my house, and they also have a carbonated version, which I dislike. I think it’s fair to say that I had not ever disliked any kind of water up until this point. I am a big fan of water to drink in general, and it has been my tipple of choice since I gave up alcohol 14 years ago but coming across some I actively disliked was enough to make me second-guess the idea of spending a couple of hundred euro on a machine which might make water I didn’t want to drink. Also, I realised that I would need a water filter as well, as I don’t drink tap water. When I was 19, the house we lived in had a water tank on top of it, and the top wasn’t replaced properly, and a pigeon got in and drowned, and I got hepatitis, just before I started university, to which I turned up two weeks late (at which point everyone had made their one friend and was clinging to them), unable to drink. Anyway, I have a visceral hatred of pigeons, and don’t drink tap water. I checked out Aarke’s very handsome, not at all cheap, water filtering options, and kept lugging bottles of fizzy water up the stairs until I got over myself and bought a much cheaper water filter jug. I didn’t mind the taste of it enough to think I could probably do without the fizzy water at home, until I just longed for fizz. But I was still worried I might dislike the taste of the gassed water so I bought a cheaper version, and I frigging love it. I’m still experimenting with getting the fizz right, but it’s certainly aiding my water intake.

The water carbonator I wish I had

I bought the the Brita version, which is fairly sleek, and although it’s made out of plastic rather than metal it doesn’t look unsubstantial - actually this is a fairly large piece of equipment, which hadn’t occurred to me when I imagined it tucked neatly and chicly into a corner with the kettle and coffee machine, but which obviously should have occurred to me if I had thought about the fact that it has to house a gas canister. Anyway. At some point I will replace it with a more beautiful model, which can be used with metal bottles, but for the moment I am pretty happy about the mere fact that I have fizzy water at home.

My best purchase all summer cost me all of €.1.50 and is an insulated shopping bag from Conad, my local supermarket. One of these goes to the lake every day, loaded up with lunch and cold drinks, and I use them as shopping bags - they hold a lot, and have a solid shoulder strap. I also use them for transporting food between my flat and the house when it’s my turn to make family dinner. They have a zip around the top which works better than those stupid tiny knobs you have to press into place on normal insulated supermarket bags, and are just as effective as any more expensive ones.

The other thing getting me through summer is, weirdly, a treadmill. Everything I read says exercise is crucial to my recovery, but walking is my exercise of choice, and it’s too hot and feels too effortful to get to the woods. I bought a treadmill that I could, in theory, run on if I wanted to one day. In the meantime I set it up in my living room, point it at the TV, and walk, and when anyone comes round I can fold it up and slide it under the sofa. I love it. It makes me feel as though I am being proactive, with minimum effort, which is always my aim.

1. Obviously since I wrote that one fan needs a new filter, one of the aircon units is leaking, and in general it is just so relentlessly hot that keeping cool is absolutely impossible.