Some like it hot… but certainly not us Brits

WE’RE having a heatwave, a tropical heatwave. And doesn’t the country know it. We spend most of the year bemoaning the weather, looking tragically out on to rain, mist, fog and grey and windswept days, desperately wishing we were somewhere exotic where we could all run around in grass skirts and look gorgeous.

Then the sun comes out and we are confronted with the hideous reality. Bright red flesh, women of a certain weight dressing like 12-year olds, men in sleeveless T-shirts (no, no, no) and the very few lithe 20-somethings who really can carry off beachware in the city making the rest of us feel hopelessly inadequate. O that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew!

Face it: we just can’t do proper heat. They say a people’s temperament is formed by its country’s weather. Hence the inhabitants of southern Europe are Latin and fiery, while Scandinavians are not known for extravagant displays of emotion, but rather for being practical and chopping holes in the ice to fish for herring. This applies across the world. In my US childhood, we lived just outside Chicago and it was accepted that the murder rate in the inner city increased during August. A combination of the heat and humidity drove those without access to air conditioning quite mad.

And we Brits secretly revel in that fact that no one lives here for the climate: isn’t living in a sunny place like LA or Dubai somehow a mark of how very shallow you are? Brits who uproot to California are said to start pining for clouds and drizzle (take note, Harry), because faced with perfection, it just gets too much.

We like going to the beach for a picnic in the middle of a howling gale, with sand getting swept into the sandwiches and the rain drenching the Tupperware pot of Coronation chicken. If it’s glorious and sunny it’s just not the same.

We like slipping in lakes of mud as we struggle back to the motor, only to find some clown left a window open and there is now an alternative swimming opportunity inside the car. We love it when it rains on our parade. Remember how proud we were during the Diamond Jubilee celebrations when the weather could hardly have been more atrocious yet the pageant on the Thames was still the biggest parade of boats ever?

We are a pragmatic people, mustn’t grumble, doing as well as can be expected, having a spot of local difficulty (this usually means you have been hospitalised), keeping a stiff upper lip. Rain and fog is our natural habitat, all this sun is somehow flashy and foreign. But don’t worry too much. The weather forecast is pretty dire.

Real life will shortly resume.