In a development that has sent shivers down the spines of meteorologists and gin distillers alike, the UK’s Met Office has announced that temperature records have been not merely broken, but violently smashed into a million glittering fragments. The phrase, delivered with the grim satisfaction of a man who has just seen his train cancelled for the third time, signals that our climate has officially gone rogue.
According to the Met Office, the mercury has been observed doing things that would make a snake blanche. Records that stood for decades have been obliterated, replaced by numbers that look like they were generated by a particularly feverish weather app. The new warning, issued with the gravity of a nuclear launch code, suggests that we are now living in an era where the weather has developed a personality, and that personality is a violent, unpredictable drunk.
As I write this, my own thermometer, a cheap plastic affair bought from a petrol station, has begun smoking. I can only assume this is its way of expressing solidarity with the national sentiment. Meanwhile, politicians are scrambling to express outrage, concern, and a vague promise to 'look into it', which is code for 'appoint a committee to deliberate until the next heatwave crashes the system'.
The absurdity of the situation is not lost on me. Here we are, a nation that prides itself on orderly queues and talking about the weather, and the weather itself has decided to stage a revolution. It is a coup d'état of the atmosphere. Hot air, once the preserve of politicians and estate agents, has become a literal threat.
But let us not despair. In the great tradition of British stoicism, we shall muddle through. We will drink warm gin, sweat through our suits, and complain loudly. And when the next record is smashed, as it surely will be, we will nod sagely and say, 'Well, that's that then.' Because that is what we do. We observe the apocalypse with a stiff upper lip and a slightly damp lower one.
The Met Office's warning is a clarion call, but it is also a mirror. It reflects our collective failure to take the problem seriously until it became a spectacle. We are now living in the opening act of a disaster movie, and the only question is whether we will be the heroes or the extras who get vaporised in the first ten minutes.
So raise a glass, dear reader. Raise a glass of something cold, if you can find it. And remember: the weather is not just broken. It is smashed. And it is not coming back for its deposit.
