I’m writing this in the middle of a heat wave, which may unfortunately be over when this piece is printed. I’m reminded of the time when I lived in the tropics and enjoyed temperatures in the early 30˚ every day in the country’s coastal capital. It was certainly hot, but never reached the ridiculously high temperatures of tropical desert.

The seasons were not hot then cold but wet then dry, the wet season being the residue of Asian monsoons. It was always hot. The dry season lasted for most of the year and was very pleasant after the first few months when expatriates had become accustomed to it. Working conditions were designed for comfort. I didn’t wear a tie for many years, and now, with my expatriate days well over, I seldom open my tie drawer. In Papua New Guinea, I went for years without wearing that egregiously useless item of clothing.

I would go to the office dressed in ‘tropical formal’, which means tailored shorts and long socks, with shirt with collar but no tie. I have tried this costume back in England but even on our hottest days this meets general derision. Our offices there were comfortably air conditioned, but when the power supply for air conditioning and back-up fans failed the heat would make working conditions intolerable and the working day would come to an end.

The time just before the rainy season started was the ‘suicide season’. The rains were expected just before Christmas, and just before then the atmosphere was oppressively uncomfortable, huge clouds gathering to the west, damp air that you could touch, but it wouldn’t rain. People suffered misery, migraines, and extreme discomfort before the weather broke and the rains came. Then relief. It rained – and rained – and rained.

My wife Ann worked for the national police force, and during that uncomfortable season just before the rains she would ring the local police commander in western province every day to find out if the rains had reached them yet. If so, we would know that we only had a couple of days of misery before the rains moved down the coast to us.

When it did arrive it would clear the atmosphere, but we would then have a year’s rainfall in a few weeks, so the roads would become raging torrents and it would be impossible to sleep as the rains battered our flimsy dwellings with their noisy corrugated iron roofs. But when the rains cleared, there were many months of hot but dry conditions to look forward to.