1. The heatwave has provided the government with a brilliant opportunity to test its shiny new emergency alert system (“DON’T HAVE BARBEQUES YOU BLITHERING IDIOTS”) and upset Thérèse Coffey. The former Conservative minister said the country must avoid “Peter cries wolf situations”, proving she knows as much about folk tales as her close friend Liz Truss knew about the economy.
2. The aforementioned emergency alert also provided the general public with a brilliant opportunity to see how it would cope with living through what felt for a moment like that scene from Threads.
3. Policy makers have been trying, for literally decades, to find a way of regenerating the economy of Blackpool, and now one here it is.
4. Actually, many British men look really fit in shorts.
5. Socks with sandals have gotta come back into fashion one day, right?
6. Finally, a chance for good, patriotic English wine to take global viticulture by storm.
7. Always nice to have the opportunity to continue our long-running national argument about whether air conditioning is a life-saving technology necessary to protect health and provide comfort on a planet that feels increasingly like it’s in some kind of cosmic air fryer, or an example of exactly the sort of decadent luxury that got us into this mess. (This argument isn’t actually new: when artificial cooling technologies first emerged in the late 19th century US, opponents argued, quite seriously, that if the Lord had meant for us to be comfortable he’d have made the planet cooler. This argument, oddly enough, was never applied to making the winter warmer.)
8. The Mediterranean diet is really good for your cardiovascular system and blood sugar.
9. The traditional colour of grass is actually very passé these days. Brat Summer was two years ago guys!
10. It has actually been far too hot to do or, frankly, think about anything. That has protected us, among other things, from the ability to give even the slightest thought to the matter of the looming climate apocalypse and the question of whether this planet will become increasingly uninhabitable in the decades to come.
11. Alternatively, if that’s too bleak for you – and I am willing to accept it might be – perhaps the multiple back-to-back heatwaves and record number of heat-related deaths and the fact the entire country south of the Humber is gasping for a drink might make us finally take this crisis seriously.
12. Water companies have actually been looking for an excuse to introduce surge pricing for ages.
13. The arrival of pumpkin-spice everything, and the entire internet adopting “spooky” names and black and orange colour schemes the moment a single leaf turns brown, is going to be a whole lot less irritating this year.
14. Record-breaking summers can also be a source of pleasing dramatic irony. Half a century ago this very week, with Britain being 15 months into an age of unusually low rainfall, the British government appointed Denis Howell as its first-ever minister for drought. Just six days later, the heavens opened, beginning an unusually wet autumn; within a few weeks, people were calling him minister for floods. You just don’t get existential jokes like that without the right setup, do you?
Suggested Reading
The 60% problem: Why a hotter climate is a crisis for the UK economy
15. One summer a few years back, I went to the South Coast for a week with the dog. I assumed, from the name of my hotel and frankly, also, from the price tag that I would be going somewhere nice. But no. Not only was it a dump, with neither room service nor – how is this possible? – wifi; and not only did I become horribly, profoundly ill the moment the train passed Hayward’s Heath; but it did not stop raining for a week. If we’re going to have to pay international prices for disappointing domestic travel opportunities, then the least the world can provide is some decent bloody weather.
16. It’s only after you hear a mysterious, unfamiliar drumming sound on the window in the middle of the night, and find yourself possessed by a strong urge to run outside and literally dance with your face turned up towards this ordinary miracle of water coming from the sky, that you really, truly appreciate rain. Footnote: True story.
17. One day, sooner than you think, we will all look back on the summer of 2026 as the most comfortable in living memory.
