My colleague Tracey Langford helping me in the baking Athenian heat
It’s set to be 30ºC today where I am in London. If you're sitting in your semi locked down garden or a socially distanced beach or engaging in a lovely stroll in the forest, have a great day. But spare a thought for those of us who have to bring the news to you when it’s very warm - or indeed when it’s very cold. Or windy. Or wet.
The BBC in its wisdom, has sent me on assignments to Iceland in December and Greece and Sicily in July. When I was in Reykjavik just before Christmas 2012, dawn didn't break until around 10:45am. By 2pm, it was dusk already. That made filming very difficult and compressed. Outside it was so cold that your piece to camera (PTC) had to be done in a maximum of two takes. Your words had to be rehearsed, tie straightened and hair combed in the car with the engine on. The crew had to mic you up and agree on a position well in advance. On the signal we all had to jump out and into action.
I remember filming in an outdoor thermal pool in Reykjavik - actually all swimming pools in Iceland are heated using natural hot wells below the surface. The real trick is getting the temperature of the water down to tolerable levels for humans.
I was in the incredibly warm water of 33º with an outside temperature of zero. You had to run from the pool to the changing room lest the water freeze on your body and you get hypothermia.
Then there’s the opposite extreme of temperatures.
During the 3rd Greek economic shock in the summer of 2015, I was sent to Athens to cover it. Millions of Greeks couldn't withdraw their own money from ATMs and the country was in political, societal and economic meltdown. Our live point was on the roof of a building overlooking the main Syntagma Sq where the Greek parliament and Finance ministry (where Yanis Varoufakis was in charge at the time) were situated.
My job was to cover all the live outlets from 05:00 UK time until ‘the One’. That’s a lot of standing on an exposed roof for 7 hours. Quite apart from the noisy protests on the square below, constantly exploding fireworks, wafting smell of tear gas and the ever changing newscape, the heat is what affected me the most.
Thankfully Greece is 2 hours ahead of Britain and Ireland which meant I didn't have to get up at 03:00 to be ready for a 05:00 live start. But it also meant that the heat was already very strong by the time it was 9am in Athens.
The more astute of you will have noticed that I have very Celtic, freckled, fair, weak, pale or pink skin. I grew up in a country where 17º was genuinely regarded as a warm summer’s day. I do not tan and will burn within 10 minutes of direct exposure to the sun.
Watching the chaos on Syntagma Sq in Athens 2015
So, to allow me to broadcast in that baking heat, I had to hide away in a doorway between live appearances on the Today programme, BBC World News, Five Live, News Channel or BBC One. Then 5mins before my allotted time, I would step out onto the roof wearing a baseball cap and holding an umbrella in lieu of a parasol. I even had a sombrero at one point.
The director - whose voice I would hear in my ear back in London - had to give me a clear countdown to being in-shot. After a week of continuous live broadcasting from Athens, they understood that when it came to the sun, I had ‘special needs’.
They would tell me when exactly I should be in position in front of the camera (or mic for radio) and then 30 seconds before coming to me - or just before the presenter would start reading the cue, I would whip off my baseball cap, discard the parasol and sunglasses, adjust what little hair I have, and start to smile as if i had been loitering nonchalantly on the roof for hours and was unaffected by temperatures in the mid to high 30s.
My colleagues used to message me to check that I hadn't got heat stroke - seeing as I was visibly getting redder (or pinker) on TV as each day progressed.
Thanks to years of bitter experience, I didn't get sunburned once. I daubed myself in factor 50 sun block and never took risks.
After the lunchtime bulletins were over I'd race back to my hotel, take a cold shower and siesta and head back to the centre of town to enjoy some of that amazing Greek food as well as watch the orchestrated evening riots.
Though I didn't at the time, I now look back on that week in Athens with great fondness.
