Column: Hot under the collar over weather

It was just a nod and a wink ago, and with a certain sense of inevitability, that I gave in to my inner-weakling and turned the heating back on again.
Nicola AdamNicola Adam
Nicola Adam

My delicate sensibilities had decided it was too cold you see. That was May.

Skip forward a few weeks and I’ve waded through the piles of bobble hats, polo necks and winter tights on the floor to don my rarely-seen, and finest, skimpy summer-wear and hang out of my open window, gasping for cool air, while googling ‘air conditioning’, ‘fans’ and ‘ice cream’ with one hand.

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I’m British you see. We love to talk endlessly about it but we don’t really DO weather. Just complaining about it.

The irony of this scenario is I’ve just paid through the nose to spend a week in the most baking part of Greece where I covered my skin in multiple layers of factor 50 in 35 degree heat and hid under umbrellas before declaring it was too warm and scampering back indoors where it was obviously, with the conditioned air, too cold.

Good job I took my woolly jumper. But on the plus side, I had plenty to whinge about to fellow holidaying Brits – not least the inconsiderate British weather being hot while we were away.

The cheek of it, we moaned, while forgetting the advantages of infinity pools, beaches and tavernas. We paid for this too hot heat, we cried, as were served with icy beers by perplexed Greek bartenders wearing jeans because they consider it still spring and cool.

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Back home and the current heatwave, if that’s what it is, has seen Brits everywhere don their beachwear for tasks like supermarket shopping and work. Garden centre managers are rubbing their hands in glee as sales of over-priced outdoor furniture, impractical gazebos and rarely-used barbecues shoot through the roof.

Meanwhile, glowing and peeling sunburn is displayed proudly as evidence that we Brits can too, do summer. Which we can’t.

But at least it’s not winter where the appearance of a single snowflake or frost send our entire infrastructure into, erm, meltdown, while over in Canada they wade to work through ten foot drifts.

Now that would be something to complain about.

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