Last night's minimum here was 17.6C, easily our warmest night of the year so far, but we slept well. Getting properly dry after the shower wasn't quite so easy... Our house retains heat via its thick walls, and we can open lots of windows to let in the breeze, but living on a farm means that you let in the bluebottles en masse if you do that (even the odd blue tit or pipistrelle), swarms of gnats on hot summer nights and millions of cluster flies if you do it any time from late August on. We found the ubiquitous fly screens in Australia to be very repressive and we won't contemplate them. I haven't tried dangling corks on string on the front of my Tilley hat as yet. We are gradually cooling down after the heatwave, though we are suffering from high humidity in the low to mid-20s at the moment.

I wear lightweight shorts all the year round, go barefoot for most of the day and wear only sandals and never socks. Just a cotton short-sleeve shirt in light colours, no vests, etc., (Mrs Steve has suggested that I need a bra...) and a sleeveless gilet to go shopping or walking in winter (winters are mild round here). I don't wear big coats ever, and I have one pair of long pants, strictly for weddings and funerals only. A sneaky cold shower with the garden hose, or just a dousing of the head, a la Maggie, works wonders. I acknowledge that one or two elements of my hot-weather behaviour are only possible because our garden is very private/I don't have to dress to go to work...

Them's my tips from Bude (and we did get a record-smashing 36C last Monday and we were the sunniest place in Britain last Friday).