For those of you with children and grandchildren, encourage them to become water technologists and engineers - this will be the single most important skill for the future of this planet. Ancient civilisations were much more advanced than we are today at doing just what @hairbear is wishing. Future generations will need to move water from where there is excess to places that lack and to capture and hold water in more effective ways. Just as @Corona advocates covering pools, we need to cover reservoirs. Every new house should be being built with underground water tanks to capture rain and to store grey water.
At the moment mankind despairs too easily. There is so much that is positive that we could be doing.
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My grandson just likes to throw it all over me when he is having his bath. Think I will be teaching him not to waste it from now on although it did allow me to mop over the bathroom floor without filling a bucket to do so. I personally think the time has come to install desalinisation plants to many areas to help with water shortages and if the predictions for rising sea levels are correct, make use of that extra water.
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In floating solar panels !
I saw some articles a few years ago where this was being done as a pilot program. Seems to me that it could be a good idea to both generate electricity and reduce evaporation.
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Great photo Ancient. If you could just get rid of the green municipal rubbish bags bottom right it would look like a painting.
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Not wanting to start the other thread discussion again Shiba but I feel exactly as you do. Animals dying, agricultural cultivation like trees or vines unable to produce or even dying, people losing their livelihoods and yet swimming pools can take water. Some excuse as campsite pools are communal and other businesses do depend on campsites though. It’s a difficult one and my thoughts are with you.
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We were hitting +30c a few days ago… and now it’s so wet and chilly, that I’m seriously considering lighting the fire… or even worse … I’m looking at the CH boiler and my hand is edging nearer and nearer the ON switch… aaargh 
Thanks Karen, the brief was ‘urban’ and they seemed an appropriate part of the scene in that context.
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One year, can’t remember which, we lit the fire in the lounge on mid-summer’s day! 
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We’ve worn t-shirts on Christmas Day and eaten outside in the lovely heat…
and frozen (like you) in Summer and huddled with thermals and the Heating/Fire…
The Weather has always been amazing here… which can be fun or can be a right horror… 
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Great photo @Ancient_Mariner 
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Thanks Gareth.
And epidemiologists and virologists/bacteriologists.
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It’s been a wretched spring in England. Middle of May and outside temperature is just over 14. We have had one day over 20, just. However, the situation in Pyrénées Orientales is far worse than a miserable spring.
I, too, remember gloomily chilly days in summer in France. The thermometer in the car showing 9 degrees as we drove through Baraqueville one June day. And lighting the fire when we got back home near Albi.
The converse, as some have remarked, is being trapped behind the shutters as the outside broils near 40.
And don’t mention the vent d’autan! Although, you knew it was going to be warm, even in winter, if that was blowing.
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Don’t worry, the Irish university system is fine. It can be a bit confusing, compared to the UK, because in addition to Trinity there are smaller regional institutions, dotted around the country that often have the suffix UC ( university college) but within my experience of undertaking joint academic research projects with them, they’re very outward looking and internationally minded, and often have some surprisingly high quality US faculty In addition there’s often the possibility of student exchanges with good US Ivy League universities.
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Years ago there was a scheme to provide a network of rivers and canals from the wet west to the dry east 9f England.
It was rejected because of cost!
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Weather’s gone crazy… flooding in Pays-Basque
and, nationwide…
We actually had rain earlier, it hasn’t even wetted the ground it disappeared so fast and was really only light showery stuff but it may just be enough to stop any fires breaking out this weekend if the surface of the dried stuff is a little bit damp. Locals getting cross and telling camp site owners to tell their clients to use the sea to swim in this summer instead of filling their pools. Most of the campsites are along the beaches so not a big trek.
If I read the News correctly, a Business will need permission to fill/refill/use their Pools this year if the region is on Red Alerte…
Not sure if this was “being mooted” or set in stone…
St P sur N is famous for flooding, it’s been on the radio for flooding all my life, only reason I had heard of it seeing I’m from the other side of the country!
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