January 2. Day 2. Hitting the bottle

Keep hydrated. That's the advice of all the emergency services for dealing with the heat. Without doubt, this is a good way of ensuring you don't die of heat exhaustion. But it will take a bit more than glasses of ice water to feel comfortable on a day like today.
The slogan for Queensland says beautiful one day, perfect the next" and mostly this is true. But there are days when words such as putrid and stinking come closer to the actuality.
Thus I did the only sensible thing - hid in the air conditioning with occasional breaks in the pool.
In the late afternoon, I did venture from the house. I drove in the air conditioned car to the air conditioned cinema.
There was no walk for the dogs - even though they have their summer haircuts, a walk seemed cruel. The heat of the footpath under their paws would have been torture. So they stayed inside as well. Their exercise involved Winkle battling Rumple to build a collection of all the dog chews left from Christmas. She won. She always does. And then the rain came and we all felt like winners.