As temperatures rise, one writer shares a tip for keeping cool overnight – but warns it may not be for everyone. On a family holiday in Croatia, he discovered a makeshift air conditioning method that worked wonders, albeit with a costly downside.
The writer's mother's house in Croatia has walls a metre thick, which stay cool in the first half of summer but become uncomfortably hot later on. While visiting for his mother's 80th birthday, he was relegated to the smallest, hottest room in the roof, which felt like a tandoor. A small fan did little to help.
On the second night, he filled the largest oven tray he could find with water and froze it. He placed the block of ice on a chair beneath the fan, and the resulting cool air allowed him to fall into a deep, satisfying sleep. However, when he woke in the early hours needing the toilet, he forgot where he was, stumbled, and knocked over the tray, soaking the bed and floor and breaking the fan permanently.
