First I got sunburn, then one of the worst cases of chickenpox the doctor had ever seen. I was supposed to be on holiday, yet I was the tourist attraction

The hottest summer nights of my life were in Australia around the Christmas of 1988. My brother was on a gap year with a mate, working in a factory in Dandenong, a suburb of Melbourne. They were living in a tiny, scruffy caravan in an overgrown field when I went to visit. It had come with air-conditioning, they explained, but on their first night it shook violently for a few seconds upon being switched on, before dying.

The heat in this oven they called home was simply appalling. I slept not at all. But this was only the third-most terrible night of my life; the second-worst and the very worst were still a couple of weeks away.

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Source: The Guardian