From our correspondent, a man whose shirt is currently glued to his spine with a mixture of sweat and existential dread.
PARIS: The city of light, love, and apparently, a rather aggressive radiative forcing event. It is, to use the meteorological jargon, 'punishingly hot'. The mercury has not so much risen as it has conducted a hostile takeover of the thermometers, establishing a regime of pure, unadulterated stickiness. The air is a thick, warm blanket that smells faintly of Gauloises and regret.
But this is not a dispatch about the sorry state of French perspiration. No. This is about what happens when a heatwave, having bullied the continent, turns its beady, ultraviolet eye towards the sceptred isle. What lessons, I ask, does the United Kingdom glean from this continental sauna? The answer, in short, is 'none whatsoever'.
The UK’s approach to extreme weather is roughly equivalent to a man who, upon seeing a tidal wave approaching, decides to put up an umbrella. Our infrastructure, a patchwork of Victorian whimsy and post-war austerity, is about as prepared for a heatwave as a penguin is for a barbecue. The trains, those metallic serpents of hope and disappointment, have a notorious habit of turning into stationary greenhouses at the mere suggestion of a warm day. 'Leaves on the line' becomes 'rails of the bendy variety', and the entire network grinds to a halt faster than a politician’s promise of transparency.
The government’s official response, as gleaned from a leaked memo (found floating in a puddle of melted ice cream at a Paddington station), is simply to 'open a window' and 'spend a night in a Travelodge'. This, they believe, will suffice. Meanwhile, the NHS braces for a flood of heatstroke cases, the elderly are advised to sit quietly in a dark room (which they were doing anyway), and the nation’s supply of Pimm’s is declared a strategic reserve.
But let us not forget the truly British response: complaining. With a stiff upper lip and a damp lower one, we shall tut and mutter and write sternly worded letters to the Telegraph. We shall form orderly queues for the last oscillating fan at Argos. We shall, in the grand tradition, simply muddle through with a cup of tea and a vague sense of impending doom.
The real lesson from Paris is not about infrastructure, but about attitude. The French, faced with a heatwave, shrug, light a cigarette, and continue with their existential ennui. We, on the other hand, will declare a national emergency, panic-buy all the Factor 50, and then complain that the weather has let us down. Again.
So, as the mercury climbs and the ice cream melts, the UK stands at a crossroads. One path leads to sensible, pragmatic adaptation: more shade, better building regulations, a functioning rail network. The other, more likely path, leads to a tabloid headline screaming 'PHEW, WHAT A SCORCHER!' followed by a hastily assembled commission that will report its findings just in time for the next ice age.
I, for one, shall be drinking gin. Neat. And blaming the government for my own personal heat island effect.
