El Andalous - Hotting Up!

El Andalous Beach from Under the Pier

Well, it’s almost July as I write this and it’s definitely hotter than it was in February.

A few of my habits have changed now that it’s hotter. I used to sit in the sun on the beach and now I sit in the shade pretty much all the time. I only sit in the sun when I’ve just come out of the sea and I want to dry off a bit. Even then, I stay maybe only 15 minutes and then retreat back to the shade (where the temperature is pretty pleasant).

I’m wondering how I managed to swim in the winter. The water must be pretty warm now (around 28-29 degrees, maybe?), but I still hesitate before going in and the occasional cold patches in the water must now be the temperature of my previous hot patches in the winter, so the idea of the whole sea being colder than that is quite scary. I will be interested to see how I feel about swimming in Jan-Mar next year, after I’ve experienced a summer over here and have adapted to the warmer water temperatures.

Some days it has probably been in the 40s. There seems to be a point where I feel too hot. I become very lethargic, feel a little unwell, and spend my day dozing on the bed or sitting up and trying to stay awake. I’m not good for much else on those days. There have probably been about four of them so far, so not common, but they do happen. I’d like to get one of those weather station things to see if I can correlate this with a temperature range.

I wonder if my body will adapt or whether I will just have to use this time being inside with the air conditioning on. Weirdly, I’ve never gone to the beach on those days (felt too lethargic, maybe) and yet that would perhaps be the cure. Alternatively, I wonder if it’s a changing season thing. I remember a Nigerian guy at the University of Dundee saying he always felt unwell when the seasons changed in Scotland because he just wasn’t used to it.

I also think I have a bit of a heat rash. For a while, my skin was feeling quite prickly and my spine has a rash and the underneath of my legs; the latter making it quite uncomfortable to sit. These are the areas I most lean on, so I think they just get too warm and sweaty. I’ve been using calamine lotion and that seems to cure it. I’m now as happy as Larry (lucky old Larry!).

If I’m on my balcony in the afternoon (I’m usually on the beach or swimming, though), I now need to have my fan on, although I don’t yet have it on full blast (I’m on speed setting 3 out of 5). Having my front door also works well to provide a steady draught of air through the flat

Generally, though, the heat doesn’t bother me during the day but I find the nights more difficult as it doesn’t really cool down at all. Very often if I have the balcony doors open, it’s making the flat warmer rather than colder. My fans were a good investment as I now have them going all evening and throughout the night and this serves well to keep me feeling relatively comfortable. However, I need to get the guy to come in and fix them as they are quite loud and shouldn’t be. It doesn’t bother me when I ‘m sitting and writing, but I do wonder if the loud hum stops me from getting to sleep at times.

The remote control sensor for the fan is on the ceiling and in the dark, the green (and sometimes red, if I have it on timer, although nowadays I just have it running non-stop) LED indicator flickers as the blades go round blocking out the pinprick of light each time they pass it. If I’m feeling neurotic, which is most of the time when I’m tired and it’s dark, I worry that this constant fast flashing will give me an epileptic fit, so I try not to lie there with my eyes open.

Each time I have a coffee, I feel uncomfortably hot, so I’ve now changed over to iced coffees, which are horribly addictive. When I first got here, my addiction was chocolate-flavoured milk but I went off that all of a sudden for some reason. Anyway, I might have problems limiting myself to two a day. I’m just using the powdered Nescafe Espresso; I was a bit sceptical about it, but for iced coffee it does just the job. I guess I’ll be back to hot coffee (and breaking more coffee machines) in the winter.