[pen] Unless there are some MAJOR upgrades to cars, it's goig to take a lot more than driving to get to where it is light past 10pm for me!

[Boolbar] *<nods>* Were I to observe thermal-riding buzzards o'erhead I might suspect a roof fire. I was once driven from Mrs Stevie's gas barbecue by a very threatening praying mantis, all of 1 inch long.

How it reached the pedals with its tiny legs remains a mystery.

(KagShuk) Even here in the south of England there is quite a lot of light at 10 pm BST (9 pm GMT) and in the north of Scotland it barely gets dark in June, given a clear sky.

Ay, why wud ye want the dark anyhoo, tis only fer miscreants ter get oop ter evil deeds in (Playing Calvinist card kept from my NZ upbringing)

Shurely the dark is the bist time to have six.

I lived up near Sunderland for a while, and what the summer days lacked in warmth, they made up in length.

That, I'm afraid, is a false equivalence. The same could be said for winter at the North Pole or even southern England.

[Rosie] Well, that's nice, but I live in the United States. I find that it even gets dark fairly early in the northern states. I don't know about Canada, but I've heard that it's around 8pm or 9pm at the latest when it gets dark there.

(KS) The 49th parallel misses us by some way. The latitude of my place is 51.318 and Edinburgh and Glasgow are not far of 56°N. The clocks are an hour ahead of the Greenwich meridian in summer but not in winter. There are few things more gloomy than a cloudy December afternoon in Britain. Pretty well dark at 4 pm.

From 30-odd degrees last week to 18-odd degrees this week. Honestly, I am struggling to know what to wear [to sit at my desk at home alone all day except for a dog walk but I do know that those comfy old shorts are going in the bin - I caught sight of my reflection and recoiled I tell you. ]

[pen] I often feel like I need three to four different sets of clothes to bring along with me everywhere, each day, when out and about in Southwest Louisiana or Southeast Texas.

So, any plans for this weekend, peeps?

[pen] Worked. Took a break to watch a football game so it wasn't quite all work and no play.

(Chalky) Fair enough. But what are you doing up at quarter past six in the morning? 0615 hrs simply does not exist in any way, shape or form.

[Rosie] awake but not up.

(Chalky) Ah! Unlike me before midday then - up but not awake.

[Rosie] that anomaly in Canada/US seems to have seen record temperatures increase locally not by the odd degree C, but by ten or so. Ever seen that elsewhere?

The weather in the U.S. had definitely been strange.

(Bismarck) Well, five, actually but even that is quite something and I'm not aware of anywhere in the world whose record has been busted by such a large margin. Having said that, one needs to be extremely rigorous in investigating the circumstances of any weather record. How long has the site been operating? Is the site representative of the area? Has it become built-up? Are the instruments reliable? Is the observer honest? That may all sound a bit dampening but it's absolutely necessary if the figures are to be put into historical context. I'd like to read some scientific articles about the heatwave; they should be appearing pretty soon. Certainly ignore the media who all have their agendas, one of which is to attract readers.

Waiting for enormous amounts of water to come gushing down the Rhine/Rijn through the Netherlands in the next couple of days. They're estimating record flows.

Belgium is under water. It's been raining for weeks. Aaaand it's St Swithin's Day.

(Bis) Well, it was here, yesterday. Isn't the Belgian equivalent St Godelieve, whose day was 6 July. It's bollocks, I tell you, like all weatherlore.

[Rosie] Wet bollocks innit? 'Ash before oak' and all that. (I didn't notice which was first this year, despite walking out every day past both kinds of trees...)

That's a safe assumption for any 'wise' saying that you can reverse engineer from just a couple of words. I wondered if the word 'soak' was going to show up in the rest of the rhyme before even looking it up. Imagine my amazement when I discovered it did.

(pen, Bismarck) This is quite a big one but European summer floods occur every now and then. Technical explanation here.. (V heavy going - don't bother). The world's a warmer place but whether that had anything to do with it is the subject of great debate. After all, Lynmouth was swept into the sea in 1604, 1769 and 1952 and it'll certainly happen again. The first two dates were in the Little Ice Age, when it was cooler and stormier.

Worth celebrating?

We sold our house in France earlier this year, which broke my heart, because I loved the place. BUT I am relieved not to have to worry any more about it being underwater. In 2016, we came within about 50cm of having the Seine fill our basement rooms floor to ceiling.

To have kept such a house would have been in-seine.

[RTG] Almost.

(CdM) That's a bit too close.
(RTG) No good. Pi=355/113. Even better pi = the fourth root of 2143/22.

It may be 2:42 in the morning where I am, but I need dark chocolate and am going to eat some and I don't care if anybody cares.

(KagShu) Very gratifying to note that I am not the only nutcase here though I must say I prefer brandy at that time of night.

[KS] Whatever gets you through the night. For me, it's not usually chocolate (that would involve climbing stairs and I usually eat it before bed anyway) but quite often another half-hour episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot is in order.