Growing old and young in a heatwave

WHAT will you look like when you’re 93? And if you are 93, what would you have looked like when you were 22? These are burning questions that many millions of people desperately need answers to.

How do I know that? Because there’s a new app doing the rounds that will pull off the magical imaging trick of altering your age and countless millions are having fun with it.

Go into a pub or any other casual gathering place at the moment and if you see a group of people huddling around a smartphone screen suddenly explode with laughter, I’ll bet they’ll be using the FaceApp.

All you do is take a photo of yourself or your pals on a smartphone, click the button either way (older or younger) and in seconds the app will produce a portrait of an ancient, or younger, person.

It is hilarious. Guaranteed to produce instant gales of laughter.

And I reckon the app-makers have been clever, in that their algorithms are quite kindly when ageing folk’s faces. Males look like nice, benign old men, while females all come

across as homely apple-pie baking grannies. Indeed, I can’t help but wonder if the app-makers aren’t born-again Christians because there’s something biblical about the faces that appear. In my “elderly” shot I look like some wise old Moses type with a white beard and sparkling, all-knowing, eyes.

In my “young” shot I look unnervingly like one of those smart, overlygroomed, Bible-bashing evangelists who go around knocking on doors. Which is creepy. So creepy that I much prefer the look of the old geezer

My daughter, who brought this app to our attention, took a photo of her boyfriend and the app did exactly the same to him. There was the white bearded old Moses - there was the creepy young evangelist.

Funny, isn’t it? Half a century ago we were sending men to the moon, now some of our cleverest brains are making apps that provide just 30-seconds’ worth of fun, and nothing else at all.

If there is a white-bearded old God up there in the heavens, I reckon he’s looking down and spluttering: “Blimey! I never expected this! Those bright little humans I created in my Big Experiment have started to evolve backwards rather than forwards!”

Then he’ll turn on Love Island, after which he will need to go and lie down in a darkened room.

And talking of darkened rooms, I went to see my mum in one this week. She’d seen advice on TV that explained how heat-savvy Mediterranean people close windows, doors and curtains when temperatures soar. Good idea. But they tend to live in buildings which are set up for hot weather. Even the tenements in places like Naples or Marseilles have high ceilings, plenty of cold marble, and wide bare carpet-less floors.

Close everything in a small lowceilinged flat which has fitted carseemed to have written half the paper. We shook hands once, and he mumbled something in a way that only Etonians can – and only Etonians would understand.

As meetings go, it wasn’t terribly memorable, and I’m prepared to bet I have a better recollection of this brief encounter than Bojo.

My encounter with Margaret Thatcher was even more excrutiating. I was at school, boarding school, and in that teenage “tunnel” when I was scared of pretty much everything, particularly anything female, and very particularly anything that looked or sounded like Mrs T. Her pets in the usually cooler climes of the UK, and you might find that life gets stuffy during a heatwave. My mum, who’s on the ball, had found the happy medium of opening a french window while keeping the direct rays of the sun out with closed curtains. Which allowed her to keep relatively cool and watch more conflicting heat advice on TV. I saw it too - or heard it on the radio.

“Put your sheets in the freezer for half an hour before going to bed,” said one professor when advising the Radio Four Today programme how to sleep in a heatwave..

“Don’t bother freezing your sheets - they’ll be hot again in minutes and that will make you feel even worse,” said another professor that same night on BBC TV news.

The fact is that in this country we are geared up for those cooler climes and heatwaves catch us with our trousers down, so to speak. It’s been hot, but here in the West - with our big thermostat, otherwise known as the Atlantic ocean - we’ve been lucky compared with those living in the South East. My son advised his journalist team to work from home on visit meant the entire school smelled of new paint, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen more red carpet being rolled out. It was a blisteringly hot summer’s day and we boys, lined up like recruits on the parade ground, stood there silently as the grand lady arrived. I was tiny up until my teenThursday after seeing the disruption to the rail network caused by the heat, then struggled all day in his flat.

“At least we’d have enjoyed the airconditioning if we’d gone in to the office,” he croaked.

Air-conditioning. That’s a twoedged sword if ever there was one. Not only is it ruinous for the environment but there’s something about the artificial coolness that doesn’t suit everyone.

Anyway, all this has inspired me to come up with an idea for a new app. You’ll take a photo of yourself on your smartphone and then press “freeze” or “boil” and the app will magically produce an image of you in a snowstorm and one in a heatwave.

The cold one will have you in a furlined parka with ice crusting your eyebrows and an icicle hanging from your nose; the hot one will portray you in a daring swimsuit, all bronzed and sweating like a tap.

Utterly useless? Of course. But it might provide you with one or two seconds of fun as the world goes up in flames.

In these cooler climes

heatwaves catch us with our trousers down,

so to speak