Heat

Somehow the engineering staff at the Hospital have managed to blow up one of the chilling tanks that works the air conditioning system. They have another one, so they can produce some air conditioning, but not enough for the entire hospital complex. Not surprisingly, their priority is the wards, because sick people have enough grossness to contend with without adding pools of stale sweat. Other buildings, like mine, have simply had their air conditioning shut off.

While they're hitting the broken chilling tank with hammers to see if that helps, they've taken a couple of innovative steps to help those of us who aren't patients. The first is to switch the air conditioning back on in the evening, when the ambient temperature is cooler and the wards need less air conditioning to maintain the standard 22 degrees. They leave it running all night, so the building is nicely chilled by the time we all turn up in the morning. However, after a couple of hours of summer sunshine outside, and the heat thrown out by dozens of people and their computers inside, the temperature drifts up and up. By late afternoon it's positively infernal.

Their other measure is to reassure us that if the outside temperature goes down during the day, they'll be able to switch the air conditioning back on. So in other words when the heatwave ends, then we can have air conditioning.

Why yes, that was a scornful tone in my voice. What gave it away?

At least there's no Christmas Party of the Damned going on outside my window today. That means that if I need to open it to let in some fresh air, I won't be forced to go on a killing spree. Huzzah!