Today, Mike decided he was going to bake bread. He mixed up the dough, got the yeast ready. Meanwhile I noticed it was getting hotter and hotter inside. The dog sat beside me, panting hot air onto my leg. After about an hour, I decided I should check if the air conditioner was still working.

I wandered outside and saw one of my Texas nightmares. The air conditioner had stopped. I ran inside to tell Mike. He checked the fuses and all were okay. We considered this an emergency as the dog is old and relies on the cooling. So we rang Jane in France.

“We’ve got a slight problem,’ Mike said. “The air conditioning has stopped.”

“That’s not a slight problem,” Jane replied. “It’s a catastrophe!”

She gave us the number of the air-conditioning guy and he said he was booked solid, but he could come first thing in the morning.

Thankfully the house is all double glazed and it was still reasonably cool inside. We closed all the blinds just in case, and limited our time opening and closing the front door.

You may think we’re being paranoid, but the temperatures have been a consistent 40 plus and because of the humidity they say it feels like 48 degrees. And I believe that. I mean, we were cycling in 40 degree heat last year, and it was nowhere near as hot as it is here.

Meanwhile the dog continued to pant hot air into the room, and Mike’s bread dough sat on the side, untouched. I refused to let him put the oven on to bake it.

I tried to have a cold shower before bed to lower my body temperature, but the water was tepid, and didn’t feel the least bit cold. We had fans blasting in the bedrooms overnight, and it wasn’t too bad, no worse than a hot night in Hamilton.

This morning the house temperature was 30 degrees, comfortable enough for us, but the dog was a bit sluggish. We waited for the air conditioning man to arrive. I would have thought first thing for tradesmen in this heat would have been 7am. When he still hadn’t arrived at 9.30am, we rang him.

He told us he was booked solid for the day, but he’d try and make it tonight.

F**K THAT, we both said, knowing that by this afternoon it would be very hot.

So Mike started troubleshooting. We’d noticed there was no power to the thermostat, so we double checked the fuses. Mike flicked the AC fuse off, then on again. Nope, still not working.

Mike did some more research into the thermostat. It turns out it runs on AAA batteries and they might have gone flat. But surely that wouldn’t affect the functioning of the air-conditioner? Would it?

We scrambled around looking for AAA batteries, but couldn’t find any.

“The head torches!” I announced. “Maybe they have AAA batteries”

I knew exactly where my head torch was as we’d used it yesterday when Mike was doing some electrics in the van. I raced outside to the van, grabbed the head torch, flung it open and breathed a sigh of relief. They were AAA.

Now to see if they work. Mike removed the old batteries and put the new ones in, and voila! Air-conditioning working again! 

The dog is no long panting all over my leg.

How something so complex can rely on two AAA batteries is beyond us.