Mom threw me out til I get some pants that fit.

[reddragdiva]

I have just braved the midday heat to buy crap in the High Street: new semidisposable shoes, new 501s (black, W34 L36, regular fit) and two semidisposable fans. (With the Chinese artificially holding down the value of the yuan, the price of anything with a plug is going through the floor. DVD players in cereal packets.) On Sunday I went out and bought an actual CD of "Dragostea Din Tei", a remarkably difficult record to find, just because I could.

Both days featured enormous quantities of underdressed chavs in three straps and flipflops. Put you off the naked body.

Insert last year's joke about how weather like this makes me want to move somewhere cooler, like England. It would be better if the Engrish could get their heads around the change to their climate and work out this "air conditioning" thing that Australia has down pat. And "awnings." And "flyscreens." I can see us shipping flywire and screen doors in from Australia when we buy a place.

Comments

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

s/air conditioning/capital expenditure/
There's nothing British businesses hate more than making capital expenditure.

[reddragdiva]

"If British business has to keep thinking of new excuses, it can't possibly compete."

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Where did you find black 501s for sale? I had a bit of trouble with this a few weeks ago, they seem to have disappeared from all the stores I used to get them from...

[reddragdiva]

I went to the actual Levi shop in Walthamstow High Street. Levi shops tend to stock Levis, particularly popular ones like black regular-fit 501s ;-)

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Air conditioning bad for the environment. Britain say: fuck work, go to the beach. We suck at dealing with the weather, though. Hehe. Heh. Just you wait. In six months we'll all be whinging that it's too cold. I know I will be.

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

Fly screens... oh god how I miss fly screens...

[zotz]

Mosquitos. I don't miss mosquitos.

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

I know I won't be. But then, I like clothes.

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Though yes, they hate innovation nearly as much :)

[themadcatlady.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, my new aircon unit is buzzing away on the other side of the room right now. It's heaven. I am sooo rubbing this in too, ain't I?!

Ahhhhh! ;)

If I could only work out how the timer on that darn thing works!

And damn, I got to brace 35 degrees in a minute too because I have to go *outside* (argh - so not-goth!) to get to the place where I'll have my tattoo done.

[m0rbid-princess.livejournal.com]

I'm having real trouble with finding jeans myself that fit properly. I need W28/L36/Skinny Fit to be comfortable - they just don't seem to exist anywhere... Any useful advice for good jeans shops will be appreciated...

[themadcatlady.livejournal.com]

Might be bad for the environment and Britain certainly does NOT need aircon for the 5-10 days a year where it's too hot for everybody.

However, where I live in the Canary Islands we had horrid temps of 50 (that's FIFTY!) degrees C last year (I slept in a bathtub filled with cold water for about a week) and even now it's almost 40 and the next rainy/cooler season is not till end of October/November. I sure hope that we don't get such extremes again, but even so, you DO need aircon here.

Can't see my cats in their little furcoast complaining either. :)

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

I hate the cold a lot more than I hate the heat. Also, winter = short days = S.A.D = feeling like complete shit. At the moment I'm just too hot and operating on my normal levels of rage. Winter and cold weather usually leave me one provocation away from violence and miserable as sin. :( Different strokes, and all that.

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

I got enough hot humid weather to last a lifetime living in ny.us and ma.us. I would be delighted to never experience another 95F/95%RH day as long as I live.

[redcountess]

As Diva mentions above, Levi's own shops are good. If you're not near Walthamstow, I think they have one or two in the city.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

I could definitely live without the humid. But I miss the hot-dry of winter drought in Gujarat.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Ah, see. You have PROPER weather.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Me too.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

The weather didn't change that much; the general UK population just became enamored of the idea that looking like a half-cooked steak was sexaaaay and lying in the sun for eight hours without any clothes on in the heat of summer was a jolly good idea. (Not to dispute that climate change is actually happening, of course, but we used to be a lot more sensible about the sun.)

[zillahgoth.livejournal.com]

Kinda sucks, what's happening to the UK. A lot of average people say 'Ooh, but [insert funny whiney townie voice] like, it's hot and nice, and, like, we don't need to gbo abroad now' - but now, people like me who die in heat over mildly warm, have to go on holiday to COLD places to live contentedly! WTF!?!?!?!?!

[reddragdiva]

You'd love the weather in Perth (hot and dry), though the place would drive you insane(r) in seconds.

[zey.livejournal.com]

the general UK population just became enamored of the idea that looking like a half-cooked steak was sexaaaay

They've always been like that. As they say, "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun." Oh, and that sunburn is the reason they're called Poms in the first place: cos in Australia they look like pomegranates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomegranate) ;-).

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Further back than that, I'm thinking Victorian and earlier, when it was fashionable to carry parasols and stay in the shade. I thought the mad dog saying referred to army and navy men, who were a bit bonkers anyway?

I didn't know that's where 'Poms' came from :)

[inulro.livejournal.com]

I can see us shipping flywire and screen doors in from Australia when we buy a place.

I have been tempted, but retrofitting the buggers, especially a screen door, would be more than I'm up to.

[wednesday]

I don't want to come back next month. I don't. There's air conditioning here. It's nice. I turn it on for a few minutes and the room is cold.

I actually have energy and lack of pain when the weather cools and/or the respite is accessible. I don't know how I'm gonna cope with England if that weather's happening already. Not opening windows just to keep insects out? Simply not an option.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Dress netting, the stuff that goes under big skirts, costs £1 a metre, has smaller holes than the size of a fly or mosquito and responds well to being stuck to windows with gaffer tape.

[juliann.livejournal.com]

One on Regent Street.

[juliann.livejournal.com]

Screen doors are harder, but I was able to get about 20m of plastic netting (so handles being folded and unfolded for suitcase purposes) for about $10 in the US. That and a staple gun and you'd be set...

I've seen places in the UK (well by places I mean catalogues) that sell velcro-attachable window screens. I presume they are plastic or nylon as well. Not good for keeping pets indoors but I bet it would keep out most beasties.

I'm tempted to put up my bead curtain, I used to think the Italians were crazy for just relying on beads/plastic "lei" threads but it seems it really does keep out most flying pests.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Boring? Or some other problem?

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

The MK Levi store actually didn't have black 501s last time I went there. I was a little surprised, but then they're not trendy any more afaia, and MK is home of the trendy these days.

I want a black denim jacket too, and they didn't have any of those either.

[reddragdiva]

I see a fantastic business opportunity!

[reddragdiva]

If a given style/size/colour exists, they should at least be able to order it in.

I think http://www.levi.co.uk/ does mail-order, but it's Flash-only so it can fuck off for now.

[reddragdiva]

So amazingly tedious it goes out the other side of "dull" and through to some sort of Nirvana-like state of introspection, only with Nutrasweet, yellow swimsuits, five months of thirty to forty degrees, undrinkable lager and hideous complacency. Also if you don't have a car you're utterly, utterly fucked. It's somewhere to come from or go back to. I've done one and don't plan to do the other.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

My god, your feelings on the place sound a lot like my feelings on my home town. I love the place, you see, I just love it OVER THERE. AWAY from me. Much like my family, in fact.

Anywhere where being unable to drive is a problem is automatically SHITE, hence why I can apparently ONLY live in London, and possibly Amsterdam.

[themadcatlady.livejournal.com]

*giggles at PROPER weather* ;)

[yady.livejournal.com]

Hm, are fly screen things really that uncommon in the UK? I grew up with them in the Netherlands and screen doors are fairly common here. Especially for balcony doors. Although my growing up with them may have been due to my father, he may have made them himself - but the stuff they're made of is sold in every do-it-yourself store.

[juliann.livejournal.com]

I looked everywhere I could get to (the big chains, some small hardware stores) because I wanted some screening for papermaking. I couldn't find anything in London, I eventually brought a huge roll back from the US.

[reddragdiva]

It's a damn good place to go when you have to get the fuck away from it all for six months or a year. Clean, cheap, fatally pleasant, lots of nice people. So quiet and clean, it's like the Martians left several hundred years ago and left all their buildings behind. But, you know, I did so much getting away from it all growing up there that I think I'll be spending the rest of my life trying to get to it all.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

It's hot here in Wales too, but we're close enough to both the mountains and the sea to get a decent breeze and it's not too humid. It's pushing 30°C, but with the dryness and the breeze I am in little danger of duplicating my "falling-over-at-Kings-Cross" trick of a couple of years ago.

I am so not looking forward to the London heat, humidity, pollution and that dratted inversion layer that turns the whole city into a bowl of overheated polluted gaseous soup. :-/

[reddragdiva]

If you don't have a fan, I'll get you one. They're £12-15 in the high street.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

My fan heater doubles up nicely as a fan, and my flat isn't too bad heat-wise in summer - it's the whole "getting from Paddington to Walthamstow in 30°C+ heat via public transport" bit I'm dreading. Heatwaves like this usually result in me being pretty much confined indoors until the weather breaks with a decent storm or three.

[reddragdiva]

You see what the standard fan in the computer room here is like and we'll see if you change your mind ;-)

I shall carry a thermos full of ice cubes or something!

[hawkeviper.livejournal.com]

Flywire and screen doors are both available from france. =P

This may interest you also: http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~gmilburn/ac/