So the French have taken to splashing about in their canals like unwashed urchins from a Dickens novel. The heatwave, we are told, has made Paris unbearable, and so the city's inhabitants have resorted to dipping their toes in the filthy waterways that once carried sewage and now carry selfies. Meanwhile, British urban planners have gallantly offered their 'blueprint' for cooling infrastructure.
How quaint. Let us not pretend that this is a triumph of public spirit or a charming quirk of continental living. It is, in fact, a symptom of the same intellectual and infrastructural decadence that has plagued Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire.
The Romans built aqueducts; we build Instagrammable canal steps. They engineered public baths; we offer a lukewarm paddle in a glorified ditch. The British blueprint, no doubt filled with soothing jargon about 'green corridors' and 'thermal comfort', is merely a more bureaucratic shade of the same failure.
We have outsourced our climate resilience to planners who have never lifted a stone in their lives. Parisians are not cooling off: they are bathing in the warm, stagnant waters of collective delusion. The canal is a mirror, and it reflects a civilisation that has given up on greatness in favour of tolerability.
Next they will be selling tickets to watch the catacombs flood.
