I'm off to the sun to cool off

I remember the summer of 1976 very well. While most of Britain turned a dusty shade of brown, my family spent two weeks on holiday in a pocket of mid-Wales where it rained every day. Torrentially.

It was also the first family holiday in which my elder brother didn’t join us (17 and too cool for school), but this meant that every evening the four of us (dad, mum, sister and me) would cagoule up and walk to the local phone box, into which we would all squeeze, while my father would call home. "What's the garden like?" would be the opening gambit. "Yellow," would come the reply. And so that went on for a fortnight. Every evening a bemused and bedraggled horse would saunter over to look at us, mockingly, as we appeared progressively more rust red while the rest of the country became increasingly less green and pleasant.

After that summer we returned to traditional British climes with July/August enjoyed in the unpredictable climate that this country had become used to. If you wanted sunshine you'd have to go on a package holiday to Spain. 42 years later, I've lost all perspective on what summer temperatures in Britain should be. The heatwave that has seemingly taken over the weather in the last two months - some parts of the UK have now gone 54 days without rainfall - shows no sign of ending. I can't remember the last time I slept solidly for the full eight hours.

We should be rejoicing. This is the kind of summer weather we all dreamed of as we dodged showers in another Cornish resort, back in the days when Cornwall wasn't the British equivalent of Santa Cruz. Heatwaves, in old money, used to be a week or, at most, two, in which the tabloids ran gratuitous front page pictures of dogs cooling off in duck ponds and young ladies in bikinis eating ice creams on Bournemouth beach, along with 'fancy that' stories of roads cracking. Now we're enduring the longest such dry spell for 49 years, and it's expected to go on for at least another week. Tomorrow could reach 35C, prompting the Met Office to issue an 'amber' heatwave alert and a "Level 3" warning - the weather equivalent of DEFCON2. If it reaches 4, officially there will be a national emergency. And, presumably, nuclear war. The irony of all this is that people are choosing to spend their summer holidays in the UK. The Times today reports that travel agents are discounting foreign holidays by as much as 40% as they try to persuade Britons, as-yet undecided about their holidays, to head for relatively more comfortable destinations around the Med.

Parched: Greenwich Park in May, and today.
Pictures: © Simon Poulter 2018 and Royal Museums Greenwich

Of course, we Brits are never satisfied with the weather, nor do we fare well with any of it. In the autumn the railways can't work due to leaves on the line; in winter, snow brings everything and everyone to a halt; spring - well, we can now skip spring and move straight on to summer, when it is hot and sunny (as prescribed), but so hot and sunny that railway tracks mangle and dustcarts sink into molten tarmac. The problem is that we're just not cut out for extremes of weather. Take the London Underground: built by the Victorians who, if they wanted to experience tropical heat would have to invade an equatorial country in the name of the Empire, its tunnels were built so deep that they cannot be adequately air conditioned. Thus, yesterday, Central Line trains reached temperatures of 36C in overfull carriages during the rush hour. EU legislation specifies that cattle should not be transported at temperatures higher than 30C. Tube trains are so hot that you may as well dress in swimwear. Regular clothing will become drenched in sweat, I guarantee you, within a couple of stops.

Such is the relentlessness of the heatwave that I can't understand why travel companies are having to give away holidays to Spain. With official NHS and Public Health England guidance being "seek shelter" as the heatwave continues and outside temperatures creep closer to the human body's own core temperature, the Mediterranean is starting to look like a very attractive place in which to cool down. There is, however, much worse elsewhere: Japan has declared a 'natural disaster' as its current heatwave sets new records, with the city of Kumagaya recording temperatures of 41.1C yesterday. At least 65 people have so far died of heatstroke with another 22,000-plus hospitalised. Even the Nordic countries are suffering - Finland is likely to get up to 29C later this week, which is, relatively speaking, extreme (though most Finns do at least have endless forests and lakes in which to find respite).

Climate change has made these extremes the new norm. Some experts say it's just a cycle, others fear that we're heading for worse. As much as I love warm weather (when I moved to California people warned me that I'd soon get bored with the sunshine - I didn't), I'm missing the predictability of the English summer. I used to like the fact that if I wanted to enjoy hot sun, a two-hour flight south would sort me out, and that I'd return to England in August, with people talking about "putting on an extra layer". Two months into this heatwave, I'm looking forward to normality. I just don't have an idea of when that will be possible.