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.