Saturday 3 August 2019 The Guardian •
Money^45
Yo u ’r e t h e ex p e r t
Our elderly estate
car doesn’t have air
conditioning. How
do we keep cool?
Do those window
shades really work?
The simplest thing is to be selective
about where you park. If you can
access a lower level in a multi-level
car park or leave your car in a shaded
area if that is possible. A white sheet
draped over the seats and steering
wheel can help refl ect the heat and
keep the seats cooler. Let the car
stand with the doors open and let
any breeze pass through it for a
little while before heading off. Yes
we have had a couple of hot days
recently but air con is hardly needed
for the other 40-plus weeks of the
year. Tiberman
Frozen water bottles, silvery
windscreen covers if you can get
them, or a towel over the steering
wheel; a pair of cotton gloves in the
glove box so that if you forget and
haven’t put the car in the shade
you can still grasp the steering
wheel, a damp cloth round your
neck, driving with the fan on and
windows open... your passenger
Next week
The wooden worktops on our ageing Ikea kitchen look awful. I don’t want
to buy more and face all the oiling and so on, so what do I put in its place? It
needs to be cheap, maintenance-free and easy to clean. What would you do?
Don’t lose your cool just because
your car has no air conditioningMoney talks
Patrick CollinsonS
eventeen heatwaves
already – and more to
come. That’s what the
Mallorca newspapers
were reporting in early
July, as holidaymakers
endured day after day of punishing
35 C-40 C conditions. And they were
right. Another unbearable heatwave
arrived a fortnight later.
The waitress in Palma was in
despair. At least you can go back to
an air con hotel, she told me. Her
home was a small shared apartment
with no air conditioning. “When I
get home, I lie on the bed, put ice
over my body and hope I get some
sleep before returning to work,”
she added.
“We used to get maybe a few days
like this in August every year. Now
it starts so much earlier and lasts so
much longer. I have no idea why you
want to come here in this heat.”
Ten million tourists visit Mallorca
every year. Airlines infl ate their
fares in July and August; hotels jack
up their room rates.
What do we get for our money?
Beaches now so insanely hot they
are eff ectively off -limits until
5.30pm or later. Hotel bedrooms
where you hide from the sun with
the aircon on full blast, knowing
you’re contributing to climate
destruction, but feeling you’ll pass
out otherwise.
The Boeing 707, Lunn Poly and
Judith Chalmers of Wish You Were
Here gave us the cheap Spanish
package holiday in the 1970s, and
British families have been heading
there ever since. Sun and cheapThe climate emergency must
mean the end of the British
summer holiday in Spain
food and drink in Mallorca, or a
washout week in Margate for about
the same money? It was hardly a
tough choice. Then, more recently,
we’ve seen the huge expansion in
weekend break tourism, encouraged
by budget airlines and Airbnb.
But the climate crisis changes
all that. A report last month
attempted to visualise its impact
on various cities around the world
by 2050. Both Madrid and Athens
will be more like present-day
Fez in Morocco, the already high
temperature in summer moving up
by as much as another 6.4 C.
I’m no stranger to the Spanish
summer heat, having lived for a year
in Madrid. “Seis meses invierno,
seis meses infi erno” is how Spanish
friends described their capital’s
climate. The alliteration doesn’t
work in English, but it translates to
“six months of winter, six months
of hell”. But that was the 1980s;
that “infi erno” is going to be full-on
Dante within a few years.Margate is beginning to look
rather more attractive. Spain, apart
from the booze, is no longer the
super-cheap destination it once
was. The pound has fallen steeply,
and may become permanently
depressed post-Brexit. Holidays
to Spain could turn into a fi nancial
disaster, with families paying a
small fortune just to sit inside
their hotels to escape intolerable
conditions outside. Once is bad
luck. But after your second or third
holiday in unbearable heat, you
won’t go again.
Parts of Palma have already
sunk into decay, with many of the
1970s high-rises built during the
package holiday boom now tawdry
and dated. Will the British seaside
resorts, that were so decimated by
Spanish competition, revive over
the next few decades?
The report, that said Madrid
will be engulfed by horrifi cally
high temperatures, suggested
London’s climate will, by 2050,
become like Barcelona’s today. It
was unfortunately worded, given
how many commenters of the Daily
Mail’s report seemed to think that “if
this is climate change, great, bring
it on”. If the climate changes that
rapidly, then it’s not clear if much of
London will be above water.
There is much discussion among
environmentalists about how we
reduce the climate impact of fl ights,
either by rationing or by price.
Maybe neither will be necessary- we won’t go, because it’s just too
damn hot.
[email protected]holding a battery operated fan
aimed at that damp neck wear ...
can work a bit. DianeDPBefore setting off in the car open all
the doors and the boot. Wait. The
car will cool down a lot quicker.
Then drive at sub-50 speeds with the
windows down. Above that put the
windows up. Then use the blowers.
For long trips freeze some bottles
of water and put in the seat wells
and a couple in the cup-holders.
RichardStanmoreI was in France a few weeks ago
driving an old car. The temperature
got to 47 C and it was unbearable.
i found that drenching a towel
in water and putting it round
your shoulders and neck worked
extremely well. Keep the windows
open and the evaporation process
cools your skin directly. Take
more water and douse every 15
minutes or so. Something else I
discovered : mobile batteries will
not charge in that heat – it was my
only form of communication or
directions in the remote mountains.
PeteTheJammaYour car has lots of vents and a big
fan, just use them. Fan air blowing
on your skin cools you by speeding
up evaporation of your sweat. You
don’t need air conditioning, which
should be illegal in the UK – it’s not
just the fuels used to drive it but the
leakage of refrigeration gases which
contribute to global warming. Keep
it simple. FairwindsBuy a patio umbrella from B&Q and
stick it through the sunroof with the
base in the cup-holder between the
front seats. That way you’ll always
be driving in the shade. (Be careful
with bridges and tunnels.) Truk10Email your sugg estions to money@
theguardian.com or write to us at
Money, The Guardian, Kings Place,
90 York Way, London N1 9GU. And
do you have a problem readers could
solve? Let us know. Ten million tourists visit Mallorca
every year, many in the summer heat
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