It has been hot. It has been so hot, that even my lovely wife Ann, who hails from Thailand, has been talking about it. Yesterday she took a photo of a temperature gauge to send her snow-bound sister in Switzerland, which showed it to be 42 degrees C in our living room, which is 107 F on the old scale. It remained 30 overnight, sleep being near impossible. Ann stayed up late working on her visa and I tossed in a pool of sweat before quitting the bed to go for a walk at about 5am.

It was little better today, though a weak southerly is passing through now and the mercury has dropped to the low thirties. Maybe this is good acclimatisation for the trip to Thailand in June, though I am still likely to disappear into a puddle on the pavement.

Yes, there are air-conditioners everywhere now in Thailand, my wife tells me. No longer the ceiling fan above a low mattress in the openly ventilated guest room - now it's all manufactured air and climate control. Strikes me that something is lost in all this.

I couldn't find any pictures of rooms I have stayed in in the past in Thailand, which is some 20 years ago anyway. Digital cameras were still in their infancy. But here is something like what I used to rent.