Searing heat

Its been absolutely baking hot the past couple of weeks as summer burns on, and as parts of London's parks turned into a Sahara desert due to a shortage of water. Its seriously no joke when the weather can reach highs of 36 celsius and there is virtually no air conditioning. Its bad enough walking, its worse on the buses and its horrible taking the Underground, especially if you're on the lines which are deep underground.

Oh, speaking about the Underground, there are plans to build a new line from Heathrow - Ealing Broadway - Paddington - Bond Street - Tottenham Court Road - Liverpool Street to the east of London. It is called 'Crossrail' and will hopefully open by 2012, subject to parliamental approval. As a side note, some of the buses are now air conditioned - as I found out as I climbed onto the upper deck of a couple of the double deckers.

Fortunately for me, half the time I work in the biological labs, which are air conditioned - and if I really want to, I have access to a huge walk-in 4 celsius storage room, a -20 freezer and even a -86 freezer. Not to mention a huge cylinder of liquid nitrogen.

Anyway, I've taken the liberty of travelling outside of London towards the Midlands for the weekend to try to escape the heat. And escaped I did, as within an hour of reaching my destination it started to rain heavily. Tomorrow we're driving up to Alton Towers as well. Woohoo! Pray it doesn't rain and that its not too hot either.