Middle-aged men do strange things when Brum’s hotter than Benidorm
AS if spurred by solar energy, an email arrived at the end of the week a couple of weeks ago – pinging into my inbox only hours after news of an impending heatwave – warning the public not to leave pets locked in cars. I won’t. Charlie’s a goldfish.
By the end of the working day, I had received similar missives about the dangers of sunburn and the need to keep an eye on the elderly during furnace conditions.
I did not need prompting over the latter. The 93-year-old over the road has 12 bottles of milk on her doorstep. There’s someone who’s read the email about drinking plenty of fluids, I thought.
One of our digital editions, warned us we were “braced” for searing heat, with temperatures hitting 29 – that’s 84 in old money. That parched period will be punctuated by tropical storms – an unfortunate legacy of global warming.
“Indeed, temperatures are soaring,” the article revealed.
Actually, I knew that. On Tuesday, I felt hot and, on the basis the sun is shining brightly, deduced this was not through illness.
The article revealed: “Temperatures will soar this week as a three-day mini heatwave with 29C highs hits England and Wales. Forecasters from the Met Office have predicted a ‘very warm’ weather blast following a drab August.”
Oh my God – not “very warm”! Avoid death by bunging your head in the fridge.
“Temperatures could soar between Monday and Wednesday, reaching as high as 29C in parts of the south,” the report added.
In journalism, such figures have to be compared with the world’s traditional hotspots in an attempt to inform readers that Birmingham is hotter than Benidorm. In an age before global temperatures were a mere computer click away, an angry editor chastised Yours Truly for typing: “It’s official – Walsall is hotter than Spalding, Lincolnshire.”
I carried out the research. Birmingham was hotter than the Bahamas, on a par with Benidorm and, surprisingly, only a few degrees cooler than Death Valley, a desert that has notched up the highest temperatures known to mankind.
On Tuesday, I was approached by one of the city’s growing band of homeless people who needed change to purchase sunscreen. He had a heavy blanket over his shoulders.
As far as street begging goes, I felt that was rubbing it in.
High street chemists are now filled with products to help the public survive the heatwave. The array of tubes and bottles serve to underline why the beauty industry does not work for men:
For men: This can be used as a shampoo, body wash, face wash, lotion, mouth wash, tooth paste, engine degreaser or sunscreen.
For women: We’ve specially formulated this moisturiser for your left elbow. I have, however, invested in some antiperspirant.
“Ball or aerosol?” asked the pharmacist.
“Armpits, if you must know,” I glowered.
You can gauge the British summer by radio stations. After two days of continual heat they play Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves. Only after a week of good weather do they dare to belt out Don Henley’s Boys of Summer.
A weekly paper I worked for in the 1970s used thermometers’ rising mercury as a signal to stalk young girls in bikinis in the local park, forces them to eat ice-cream for pictures. The names of the girls changed, the poses did not.
The salacious images would be accompanied by the words: “Phew what a scorcher... Sammy-Jo and Sophie keep cool as the West Midlands endure hotter temperatures than Aziziyah.”
The heat brings out a primeval longing in British males.
As the sun beats down, something pulsates and crackles deep in the grey matter of middle-aged men. “At last a chance to show everyone my pink beer-belly,” they say to themselves.
That they do. It’s as if they think, “how can I impress the ladies? I know, I’ll display my huge stomach. Might even burn it, too... and throw in a bit of builder’s bum.”
Even now, him-over-the-road, a man so fat he was snubbed by Weight Watchers on the grounds it would take too much time, and too many people, to watch something that big and wobbly, is fixing his car wearing next to nothing.
The suspension has gone, apparently. On the driver’s side, I presume.
We Brits have an infatuation with hot weather. We take pride in knowing our town or city is hotter than Benidorm. Once the temperature tops 76, we are gripped by a desire to expose parts of our lily-white flesh that seldom see the light of day.
On Tuesday my wife’s ankles were on display. On Wednesday, I scanned the array of oiled bodies draped around the Drum and Monkey’s sun-drenched beer garden. My drinking companion Colin announced loudly: “Unbelievable! One slice of summer and everyone in this country strips off. Do they realise how ridiculous they look?”
I turned to him and enquired if that was a Union Jack motif on the posing pouch he was squeezed into.
At least Colin was flying the flag. One lager drinker was sporting a pair of budgie-smugglers with “I’ve Been To Derwent Pencil Museum” written on them.
“You’ve got to make the most of this weather,” said Colin
“The important thing,” he warned, “is to keep hydrated.”
“How many beers have you had this afternoon?” I asked.
“This will be my seventh.”
He was so richly hydrated, he slurred and swayed.
“They stopped me going into work in just my denim Bermuda shorts,” Colin huffed. “Reckoned it breached some ridiculous health and safety regulation.”
“But Colin, you’re an arc-welder,” I pointed out. With the mini heatwave only days old, I was confronted by a gent in rather revealing shorts, flip-flops and liberally stained by calamine lotion.
Call me old fashioned, but I expect something a little more conservative from my dentist especially in his surgery.
“Hot enough for you?” boomed the radiant boss of our general store whose entire conversation revolves around the weather. When it rains, he replaces the greeting with: “Wet enough for you?”
Hail makes him mute.
“The weather is hot enough for me, yes,” I told him, “but not for my pot-bellied pig. I have to rub suntan lotion on him to stop his skin cracking.”
The lie threw him for a second, then he resumed the sales pitch. “You know what you need in this weather?” grinned the trader. “Charcoal.”
I gave him a bemused look. “For the barbecue,” he explained. I told him I did not possess a barbecue set. I once did, but the magic of cooking outdoors was lost after I burned down a lattice-work fence and cremated the pet guinea pig.
“Buy some charcoal anyway,” the shopkeeper insisted. “In this weather, there’s nothing more relaxing than a spot of brass rubbing.”
Just given my niece away at her wedding. “She used to be a man,” I shouted.