A blade of grass can show which way the wind's blowing...

Somewhere in an early episode of Sherlock, John Watson's therapist tells him to blog. Record everything, because looking back over the journal yields a sense of where you were, where you are, and hence, where you might be going. So it's worth noting this:

We've begun to talk about the possibility of one day retiring to a cooler climate. Meaning -- for Aussies -- Tasmania, of course. Now, I've never actually been to Tasmania, so the first thing to do before making any decisions would be to visit the Derwent Valley on holiday, not once but several times. See it in every season, not just in the lovely, "English-like" summers, but also in the wet, cold southern winters. Remember that Hobart rarely if ever gets a flurry of snow except in the mountains, and "cool" is a relative term, particularly in a worlds that's getting so bloody hot, we're having these conversations anyway!

Harping on an increasingly familiar theme, it's just TOO HOT here, already, and the warming trend is only going to go on, with conditions getting worse as years go by. Yesterday, Dave and I were out in the southern Fleurieu Peninsula, looking for a cool spot...

Nope, no joy. Even Inman Valley, which would have been far cooler, was absolutely blistering. Milang was roasting, even down by the lakeshore, where at least a breeze was blowing. '

And that wasn't even the hottest day forecast in the current hot spell:

Tomorrow is going to be such fun. Not. And there really is no answer to this --

Well, there is, but only for people who actually own the house they live in. You can triple-insulate, cover the roof with solar panels, beef up the a/c system, install those special angled, sun-deflecting blinds at the windows. This would create a pocket of cool in which to take refuge for months out of every year.

But landlords generally don't invest this kind of money in rental properties (things might change in future, with the climate going bonkers). We've always rented, and though we've lived in half a dozen houses in the last 20 years, not one of them has been properly insulated, with those blinds. Two of them had a/c that served only one room in the house. Another had only ceiling fans, no a/c at all. One had evaporative a/c, which is inadequate to the job as the temperature soars toward 50 degrees...

All of which makes you wonder how wise it will be, still calling Adelaide home in 2030. Retirement age comes up for me much sooner than that. By 2030, I'll be a septuagenarian! The heat is killing me in 2019, so what'll it be like in another decade, when the climate is that much hotter, and I'm getting ever closer to this life's departure lounge?! It's food for thought, isn't it? Meanwhile...

This, below, is on my mind. No, these are not my shots: I've never been to Tas. But -- compare with the above shots of the poor, roasting Fleurieu yesterday, and think about it...