Firetop

It can get awfully hot in Somalia up to forty-five degrees Celsius at the peak of their summertime. For the Giraffes that live there it must get a bit uncomfortable, but luckily, thanks to millions of years of evolution, Giraffes can go for several days without water. Somebody please tell me why then in England, when it gets to a measly thirty-six degrees, we have zookeepers feeding ice-lollies to Giraffes to help them stay cool. Call me crazy but I’ve never seen David Attenborough interrupted on a nature documentary by a Mr Whippy van playing the tune of ‘Boys and Girls come out to play’ pulling up to feed a gaggle of meer cats anxiously awaiting their Soleros…

I’m going to be a really grumpy old man about this but this just typifies the British way of dealing with a bit of heat. On the railways there are announcements of ‘please make sure you take off your jacket if you get hot’, ‘always carry a bottle of water’ and this my favourite ‘try and travel when it’s a bit cooler’. Chance would be a fine thing, if it’s not leaves on the line in winter it’s buckling rails in summer.

On television we see stranded tourists who have gone to the Lebanon on holiday to ‘get a bit of sun’ (which strikes me as an odd destination but anyway…) yet these are the same people who when back home, start saying ‘it’s too hot, it’s too hot’. I heard my neighbour’s mother say to him in their garden tonight ‘They’re telling people over seventy to stay in you know’. Are they really? In Italy you’ll see people ninety years of age sitting on street corners in the midday sun watching games of boules. Nobody’s panicking and telling them they’re going to die in the heat, or taking their jackets off for them.

With climate change a reality we just need to get a grip and start providing solutions instead of whinging on. I’d love to know what an Egyptian makes of our news headlinesbeing ‘thirty six degree heat closes schools’. They have schools in Egypt, which don’t have air conditioning but children still attend.

Please god, just don’t let me open the Metro newspaper tomorrow morning to more photos of bikini-clad girls dancing in fountains in Stevenage Town centre with ‘Stevenage hotter than Honolulu’ written beside them.

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