Airforce 1, Mother Nature 0 [Brit]

It's a perverted myth that we don't do summer in Britain - whether you subscribe to the tree hugging ozone theory or not, the simple fact is that between June and September the British Isles has a go at some hot weather.
What we don't do however is prepare for summer. Instead we comment incredulously on the heat, our then inability to get a good nights sleep, and we look less suspiciously at retailers pushing huge fans and other cooling equipment... before heading down the pub.
Things are slightly different at Chez Brit this year; indeed, if you were to have walked by last night, you could have been forgiven for thinking we'd driven a refrigeration truck in and left it running. Indeed, this year, we have prepared for the arrival of summer.
We've tried fans, believe me. From the huge chrome slow-rotate ones, to things that have a higher RPM than your average helicopter - and the effect is always the same; warm air gets pushed around a bit, and of course, gets gradually warmer until you might as well be trying to sleep under a hair dryer.
Yesterday, things changed - leaving work early so as to discharge my household duties in a respectable manner, we stormed B&Q's aircon section. Which was just as well, because as we drove up, no less than six other folk were busy cramming ACUs into their own cars.
So enter the Air Force 12000BTU mobile air conditioning unit; a behemoth of a machine at nearly 50kg - a monolithic silver beast that (I kid you not) had most of Brit Towers down to 16 degrees centigrade in about 30 minutes. £250 might strike some as rather expensive for something that seems to run so at odds with the myth of a British Summer, but when you think about it, this stupid weather will continue for at least three months meaning I can now definitely say that a good night's sleep costs roughly £2.70
So, summer is here and we love it - but not at night, when we much prefer our own mini arctic and the Air Force is happy to oblige!