How did I get here? Just a decade ago, I was covering murder trials in Crown Court, and today, I’m daubing my spare room’s window with Smart Price yoghurt.
Among the many directions journalism has taken me in, I did not expect to be doing this. But then again, neither did I expect that putting cheese on a bird table would lead to hundreds of thousands of people reading my work, so we all have to find our ways to pay the mortgage. And we all have to keep cool in hot weather, which is the reason I painted yoghurt on my windows today.
Among the hundreds of mortgage-paying articles I’ve produced for the Express about how to keep cool in a heatwave, one of the downright strangest is this tip from a website called Heatwavetoolkit.com, which lists the yoghurt method as one cheap and easy way to cool down your house.
The theory is that the temporary coating painted on the glass will reflect and deflect some of the heat shining through it.
It claims: “Is the sun beaming through your windows? Paint a temporary coating on the external surface of the glazing. This will reflect some heat from the direct sun entering the property and is far more effective than closing internal blinds or curtains. It will reflect heat away while still allowing light through, and it will be ready to be washed away when not needed.
“What’s cheaper, more readily available and works even better? Yoghurt!
“When the heatwave is over, just wash it off! Does it smell? No! Does it attract vermin or insects? No! Give it a try and let us know how you get on.”
So, I did exactly that.
This morning I got a tub of Asda’s finest (actually, Asda’s cheapest) 85p fat-free Smart Price yoghurt (other crap yoghurts are available), which I normally blend with honey, porridge oats and raspberries from my garden for a cheap compote of a morning, and instead plastered it across my office window.
I chose this room for two reasons: one, it faces the sun in the mornings, so it heats up like a furnace normally. Two, I have to work in here all day, so if I can do anything to de-saunify this little spare bedroom-cum-office, I certainly shall.
The temperature outside in sunny Leeds hit 30C today, just as it did yesterday. I took a note of the peak temperature in here yesterday – 27.5C at 16.32 – then yoghurted up my glass this morning, and went about my day as normal, writing about the hosepipe ban, caring for roses, the Cash ISA u-turn and petrol prices.
I didn’t do a thorough job on the yoghurt, pasting it over most of the window that’s not covered by houseplants, and calling it a day.
By 16.32 today, the temperature was… 26.1C. What’s more, the room is darker – I can definitely tell the yoghurt is doing something. And so far, it doesn’t smell, it hasn’t attracted flies, and it doesn’t even look that bad. It just looks like white paint.
So on the whole, it’s been a little bit successful, but I’m not sure households will be running down the supermarket for an industrial tub of Danone just yet.
