Cool heads save lives

HOW are you feeling on this sweltering Sunday morning? Sweaty, exhausted, fuzzy-headed?

Perhaps you’re reading this while loitering in the freezer aisle at the supermarket, or having just stepped out of the tepid, four-minute shower which you timed by singing Bon Jovi’s Livin’ On a Prayer.

Or maybe you’re eating watermelon and frozen grapes in front of a fan with the windows and curtains closed, having slathered on a bottle of Factor 50 and dropped your knickers to keep your nethers cool. If so you must be suffering from Heatwave Hysteria. Because there’s no reason to sweat about the mercury rising towards 40C, is there?

These experts offering cool-down tips are just nambypamby scaremongers…or “snowflakes” scared of melting. We just have to use some common sense.

That’s what many commentators would still have you believe, despite a Met Office “danger to life” alert and repeated health warnings over Britain’s Death Valley temperatures.

Most hark back to the “glorious” summer of 1976, when we swam in rivers, sunbathed all day and had never even heard of global warming. We didn’t need the nanny state to tell us to drink more water or wear a hat! Well, I remember the summer of 1976, too. I was only 12 but desperately wanted a tan like my best mate’s sister.

So I slathered myself in baby oil and lay in the midday sun like she did – then ended up in A&E with a burned back and a furious Mum.

My brother also got a rollicking for jumping into the Cut with his mates, one of whom couldn’t swim and nearly drowned.

This week I saw video footage of a group of lads leaping off Tower Bridge into the River Thames. And I spotted several human lobsters broiling themselves in the park.

Common sense, eh? I’ve also been fretting about a friend with melanoma who has just had another suspicious mole removed.

And reading that the skin cancer death rate in Britain has tripled in the past 40 years and now claims the lives of six people every day.

So please don’t tell me we’re suffering from Heatwave Hysteria or getting our knickers in a twist unnecessarily.

We’ve all heard enough about global warming to realise that Death Valley temperatures are going to become our norm.

And only a hot-head would ignore the experts giving cool advice that saves lives.