Keeping Your Cool: How A Face Flannel Could Save Your Life

Advice from Interlegal Translations on keeping cool in a hot climate

We all remember the searing heat of two summers ago when hundreds of people died in Paris, almost all of them elderly and living alone. They had no help and no idea of how to cope with the seemingly endless days of suffocating temperatures. On the hottest day that it had ever been in England, I visited a friend of mine who lives in Waterlooville, Hampshire and she fried an egg on the pavement outside her house!

Even for us Brits, who did not have to put up with such a long hot spell, very hot weather is pretty uncomfortable. You can get heatstroke by the body overheating even if you are not out in direct sunlight. The advice given by NHS Direct is valuable, but it is incomplete. Fortunately, there are a lot of ways in which you can prepare for another hot spell this year and stay cool and comfortable the whole time:

• Prepare your home as soon as temperature starts rising. Roll up the rugs and put them in mothballs, along with any heavy curtains and interlinings as all these heavy furnishing retain the heat. Don't forget those mothballs, this is also high season for egg-laying moths. Cheap, thin curtains can be bought ready-made or you could even run up your own.
• Does your house have plenty of through draughts? Make sure that it has. Keep doors and windows open, if possible, when you are home. If you are worried about intruders, a good trick is to keep a row of cacti and other prickly plants along the windowsill, so that anyone trying to get in will knock them over and probably get a few nasty thorns stuck in them in the process! Remove net curtains if you can, they tend to block out the breeze.
• Keep your body as cool as possible. Whenever you visit the bathroom, hold your wrists under the cold tap and ankles under the shower. Keep a wet flannel (face-cloth) with you at all times (slip one into a little plastic bag and keep it in your handbag when you go out). Use it to dab your wrists and the back of your neck. While sitting watching the television, wrap a damp towel round the back of your neck and keep flannels on your wrists. You can sew two flannels together or use a French "gant de bain" or bath mitt and fill it with ice and pat yourself with it. Try not to go out in the heat of the day, wait until it is cooler to do your shopping.
• Prepare your kitchen for drinking the right things. Drink plenty of cold water, always keep one or more bottles in the refrigerator. For the hottest days, add a little lemon juice and a sprinkling of salt to the water. Stay away from alcohol; even fizzy drinks will just make you feel hotter once they have been drunk. Make sure you always keep your ice trays full and buy a few more. Take a tip from the Americans and drink plenty of iced tea. You make the tea the usual but twice as strong and leave it to brew. Let it cool slightly, then pour it into a big jug and add plenty of ice water and ice, as well as some quartered lemons or limes and a sprig of mint. Incredibly refreshing!
• Prepare your kitchen for eating the right things. Eat as little "heavy" food as possible, i.e. fatty meat and cream. Eat as much raw food as possible. Do not use a conventional oven it generates more heat but a microwave oven is fine. Cook vegetables, such as beans, artichokes, asparagus, etc., and leave them to cool, then refrigerate them and eat them cold with a light vinaigrette dressing. Wash all fruits and vegetables thoroughly before eating. Ice cream is cooling but bought ice cream is almost solid fat, so make your own water ices, then you will know what they contain. They will need to be sweeter than food at room temperature, use liquid sweetener or a powdered artificial sweetener. You can just sweeten a fruit purée and add some lemon juice, then freeze it.
• Avoid buying takeaway food, it is much more likely to be contaminated in very hot weather. If you get "the runs" go to the chemist immediately and ask for a powder to restore your electrolytes, do not take a product that merely suppresses diarrhoea, it may be bad for you and will not restore the natural balance of fluids.
• If you run an office, prepare for these hot spells. Hiring a temporary portable air conditioner is the most expensive option, in terms of hire cost and electricity consumption. Ensure that you have a regular supply of ice water available for all employees, the cost is not high. Fans are messy and use a lot of electricity, the only thing you can do, as a small company, is install air-conditioning. The same applies to the people most vulnerable to the heat - the elderly and people with chronic illness. The cost of AC has come down considerably, it is much easier to install and it does not have to run for long to cool down a room. If you cannot afford to install it in all the rooms, choose the bedroom first, as this room is likely to be higher up in the house (it will be the hottest room in the house if under the roof, even if the roof has been well insulated). Then choose the room which you use most. If those two rooms are air-conditioned, you can forget the rest of the building.

Keep well and comfortable!

Further information about the author

Josephine Bacon is a professional translator and interpreter and a freelance journalist who has lived in hot countries for sixteen years and knows a thing or too about what it's like to work in temperatures of over 36°C (100°F).