Weather has got me hot under the collar
IT AIN’T half hot. The other evening, as I lay déshabillé on the sofa at midnight watching the ice cubes melt away to nothing in my just-poured glass of water and the thermometer level stick, resolutely, at 28C (82F, hotter than Ibiza, Hawaii and probably the Earth’s inner core) a depressing thought struck me: we’re not cut out for this.
Hot weather, the proper roastytoasty sort where even a barbecue seems like too much effort and socks are a distant memory, is not a Scottish speciality.
Most of us don’t have the wardrobe for it for starters, which means rooting around among holiday clothes for something that won’t have you passing out on the train to work but will look reasonably smart in the office (note: that off-the-shoulder flowery number and the day-glo neon flipflops isn’t it).
Most of us don’t have the countenance for it either, our pale, milky skin wilting under the sort of sun usually seen only in a holiday brochure. One friend related the tale of a woman at a bus stop in the sweltering heat who turned and muttered, through fevered, lobster-coloured brow, ‘this is pure murder’. Well, quite.
Even our cafés and restaurants are flummoxed, hastily arranging outside tables that look as though they could do with a good wash on pavements that are more used to discarded wads of chewing gum than hordes of al fresco diners. Then there’s our infrastructure. Scotrail went into meltdown – literally – after the weather caused a raft of delays and cancellations due to ‘high rail temperatures’.
Even the Glasgow Science Centre (somewhere, surely, that should be fitted with all the latest weather-proof tech) started to melt in the heat, with unappetising black goo dripping down the sides of the building.
The truth is, Scotland just can’t cope with extreme weather at all, as the Beast from the East rather brutally taught us (and beleaguered ex-transport minister Humza Yousaf) earlier this year.
We live in a lily-livered climate that has made an art out of the word ‘fair’, where most days the weather is neither one thing nor the other, and if you wait five minutes it’ll probably change anyway.
The Aussies think we’re pansies for getting hot under the collar at 30C, while the Canadians think we’re ridiculous if our motorways shut down in the snow. Then again, we don’t have air-con in our houses, and we don’t have snow chains on our tyres.
I will be quietly relieved when the weather cools down and – whisper it – we see a spot of rain.
Our weather system might be a little dull, but there’s nothing like a spot of blistering, murderous heat to make you appreciate it.