I’ve had enough of the heatwave… please can we have grey Britain back?
As lovely as warm weather is, there’s only so much of it we can take
In Cornwall last week, I found myself in the midst of a strange fantasy. The strange fantasy did not – as most of my strange fantasies do, whether in Cornwall or any other part of the planet – involve the man who plays Poldark, a bucketload of clotted cream and some wetsuits (don’t ask). No. Instead, it involved rain. So much rain. Lashings of it. And perhaps some wind, too. A slate-grey sky. Dark clouds, as far as the eye could see. Angry waves crashing on to an empty, desolate beach. Beanie hats and cagoules. Umbrellas blown inside out. Jumpers and Wellington boots. Warming cups of hot tea in a beachside café.
Instead, there was only this: sun, endless sun. Blue skies that bled into pink and purple sunsets. And then, some more sun. The bloody sun.
“I can’t believe it,” I kept on saying, over and over again, as we spent our fifth consecutive day swimming in turquoise waters, slathering ourselves in factor 50 and reading books on a beach… as if we were on holiday or something.
“It’s like being in…” “… Australia!” said my friend Laura.
I was going to ask Laura if she had ever been to Australia – did Australians, for example, walk around eating pasties, proudly displaying their sunburn in the shape of a T-shirt – but then she got stung by a jellyfish and her husband spotted a giant shark, and I had to concede that perhaps she had a point. OK, it was a basking shark that feeds on plankton, but a 9ft blue shark was filmed in the shallows of St Ives a couple of days later and then there was the news out of the University of Southampton that both great whites and hammerheads could soon be swimming in our waters due to climate change. “There are great whites in the Med,” said Dr Ken Collins, “and so I see no reason why they shouldn’t be spotted here, particularly off the coast of Cornwall, where there is an abundant supply of seals, which is their favourite food. Seals are like hamburgers to sharks: fat, juicy and meaty.”
I got out of the water pretty damn quickly, I can tell you.
Guys, this needs to stop – this being the wall-to-wall sunshine that we have had more or less since the end of April. As lovely as warm weather is, there’s only so much of it that we coldblooded Brits can take before spontaneously combusting into tiny, smouldering piles of ash. We have reached – or are about to reach – peak sunshine, and you can tell by walking the streets of any town or city. Everywhere you look, the thousand-yard stares of people who haven’t slept for a month, because it seemed silly to buy an expensive Dyson fan back in May when it’s only ever hot for two days of the year, and now it would definitely be a waste of money because as soon as you put the order in at Argos, the weather will turn. The slow, sweaty shuffle of a population whose diet has become 50per cent rosé, 50per cent barbecued meats.
People will tell you that they were sad when England lost the World Cup semi-final last week, but really they were relieved – relieved because they couldn’t have taken another moment of the excruciating torture that is being made to imagine that we might actually excel at something.
The greatest thing about Britain is how average we are. The weather is grey, the earth moves so rarely that you really have to wonder how we manage to keep population levels stable, and we don’t (as yet) have any animals that can take us out with a single bite. If poisonous creatures do venture on to UK soil, they tend to be making state visits from the US, or flying under the radar from Russia.
The great joy of being British is how mundane we are; this is why when people think of the UK, they think of Mr Bean, cups of tea and, if they’re feeling particularly adventurous, red phone boxes.
It would be a dreadful shame if – just as we are about to Brexit – Britain became the kind of place where people were forced to have siestas, sip sherry al fresco of an evening and generally spend their days smiling, in a state of relaxed bliss. No more fun and excitement, please. We are, after all, British.