It’s a whole degree cooler than yesterday’s 33.9°C in my home office today. That’s still over ten degrees hotter than I’d like it to be.

My expensive new fan arrived this morning, and is doing a decent job of taking the edge off the heat, but it’s not an air conditioner and there’s only so much that moving air flow can achieve, so it still feels oppressive and it’s been pretty hard to get motivated while working today.

Thankfully the temperatures are forecast to begin dropping over the weekend to a much more manageable mid-20s range (and, more importantly, overnight temps below 20°C, so there’s a chance to open the windows and flush out the hot air).

The sub-tropical climate of Madeira felt more manageable than this, mostly due to infrastructure designed to deal with it – air-con, tiled floors, window-shutters and the like, most of which go against the standard UK building methods that are designed to keep heat inside. If the summer temperatures in the UK continue to rise in future, then there is going to be a real need for change to prevent severe disruption.

But anyway, this is meant to be a photography blog, not an essay on climate change, so here’s another shot from the holiday. It’s another digital picture (although I have received four sheets of film negs back in the post today, so plenty of those to share too when I get around to it).

Being a Portugese territory, you’d expect to see plenty of Portugese flags in Madeira, but there were probably more than usual due to the World Cup tournament taking place while we were there (Madeira also being the birthplace of their famed striker, Christiano Ronaldo – there’s even a museum in Funchal dedicated to him). At this stage Portugal had not yet been knocked out…

Ricoh GRIII

Taken on 27 June 2026