Dilettante: How I learned to hate the great British heatwave

We all lie to ourselves constantly, without even realising that we’re doing it. We don’t understand who we are, just like we’ll never truly get what we look like to others, even if we endlessly see ourselves in mirrors and on phone screens. I spent a lot of my life not merely convinced that I enjoyed hot weather, but being moulded by that belief.

Many of my childhood and teenage summers were spent in Morocco, and I know what real, unbearable heat feels like. I remember the sleepless nights, the air that hurt to breathe in, and the water coming out of the hose close to boiling. As a result, I learnt to cherish what I saw as the more moderate side of heat; the late 20s and early 30s which, to me, merely feel like the sun is gently hugging your skin.

I moved to a country where anything above temperate feels excessive, and it made me feel so foreign that I decided to play on that difference, and make it my own. For 17 years, I wanted it hotter, and hotter, and hotter. I watched my friends melt and despair, and in a small, cruel way I enjoyed it, because it proved to me that we weren’t the same.

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I would spend every winter in agony, piling on layers yet never quite managing to warm up my own soul, but I knew that better days were coming, and it helped. I prayed for heatwaves and when they arrived I luxuriated in them; insisted that we sit on terraces, went for lengthy swims, lounged like a lizard that was particularly pleased with itself. Then, this year, something shifted.

I’m not sure why or even when it happened. I loved the unseasonably scorching weather London had in the spring; I took my ginger boyfriend out for lunch sitting outside a restaurant once, sitting at a table without even a hint of shade, and I enjoyed myself too much to truly feel bad about it. I went to the lido and I wore my nice dresses and my slouchy shorts and I felt truly happy.

I guess the problem is that the heat never really went away after that. We had that first heatwave, then we had another one not long after that and, as I write this, a third is about to hit the capital and its surroundings. Between them, we have had so few days where temperatures haven’t reached the late 20s. It’s felt relentless.

I even bought a fan the other week, something I never would have considered doing even last year. I’ve got a fan now and still, I moan and roll my eyes when I look at the forecast and see that there isn’t a single 22-degree-day in sight. Who am I? No, really, I ask because this has made me realise that this image of myself I had firmly lodged in my head unfortunately had little to do with real life.

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I loved the heat in the way you love that friend who lives halfway across the country, and whom you only see once a twice a year. I loved it as an occasional treat, like drinking far too much and waking up the next morning feeling poorly. I loved seeing it appear on the horizon and watching it in the rearview mirror, because I knew it was a rarity and should be treated as such.

Like the proverbial teenager, I’ve now been given an entire pack of cigarettes to smoke in one go, and I’m beginning to truly see that you can have too much of a good thing. On the bright side I suppose I can now join your cranky, sullen, exhausted ranks, and I can proudly say: oh, wouldn’t it be lovely to have to wear a light jacket again, just for a few days?