air conditioning

[joanne0012]

> Lynda wrote: 
> >   Silly question, this, but it bothers me.  If the houses on 
> >  Privet Drive are  so "nice" and the owners so "particular," why 
> >  do they have their windows open  on a hot day?  Don't houses like 
> > that have air conditioning? 

An American here, just adding to the expert consensus: I once did a home 
exchange with a family who had a VERY fancy townhouse in the London 
outskirts, in Finchley.  The ten-minute walk through their neighborhood to the 
tube revealed that everyone else, like them, had neither window screens nor 
any type of AC in homes that listed at the local estate agent's for hundreds of 
thousands of pounds (eat your heart out, Petunia!).  Yet during our visit we 
encountered not a single fly or mosquito. How do they DO that?!  

Meanwhile, back here in the US, we were having temps in the 90s and my 
poor  exchangers, after having special lessons in operating our air 
conditioners, couldn't sleep with the noise of them running and spent our 95-
degree heat wave sleeping in the basement playroom!