How do you 'heatwave'?
Gliding around in a Panama hat or in a sweat-suffused rage?
The morning routine of a heatwave has its own special ritual: wake-up (if you’ve managed to sleep at all) to the glare of the sun through the blinds; scrabble for phone and check the temperature for the day, frantically scrolling down the forecast for a day heralding a drop of maybe three degrees; enjoy a shower where you’ll be at exactly the right temperature for the duration of said shower; sit on the edge of the bed staring at the wardrobe door wondering when someone will invent clothing that will magically protect you from charges of indecency but will touch no part of your skin.
Oh, I know. We can’t stop talking about the heatwave or whining about it after a weirdly arctic spring. But a) national pastime and all that and b) we are not equipped, practically or psychologically. Obviously, there’s a much more serious angle to this, given climate change, but this is a lighter-hearted look at how a few days flips us to feral.
Yesterday, I stood in the pharmacy waiting for a quick consult for an itchy scaly patch that had appeared from nowhere on my elbow – another gift from the heatwave gods. As I stood there browsing the strangely comforting time-warped shelves, gently poaching by the Atrixo hand cream, an avuncular Italian man greeted the pharmacy with a, “Ah, an Italian summer!” He was in his element. Yes, it’s ok for you with your aperitivos, Amalfi lemons, nippy Vespas and all round dolce vita, I thought, neglecting the fact that he was picking up a prescription in a suburb in the UK. It was writ large in his soul though. It was in his DNA. Mine is scored with drizzle.
I used to be an all-out summer heat person. School holidays were spent splayed out in the sun, listening to the Walkman, coated in Hawaiian Tropic. Show me a beach and I was down there aiming for the hue of a perfectly roasted sausage in the days when Factor 15 was considered the highest protection. My only regret being that I wasn’t part of the ‘Sun-in’ and lemon juice crowd because I was a brunette.
But now, the heat ‘hits different’ as my daughter might say. I’m slathering on SPF 50 on my face and my moles have been mapped. Having been an avowedly ‘Summer person,’ I now find myself chuntering about much preferring dressing for winter.
Summer cleaves people. You’re either in the pop-on-a-strappy dress, Panama hat and flip flops crew look either freshly powdered or glowing from your 57 step Korean skincare routine as opposed to sweat. Even your linen doesn’t crease! Or (hello) you’re panic buying dresses that don’t touch you’re skin, hoping you’ll channel the six foot angular model on the Cos site rather than looking like a gust of wind might propel you into the air with your voluminous dress and end up as a contender at the Bristol balloon festival. You’re scanning those racer back vests and realising that you don’t have the right bras and the only one you want to wear in this heat is your comfy one.
I find myself behind people walking around town in flip flops, marvelling ‘How?’ Mine can take me from hotel to pool or beach. Beyond that, the fetchingly-named ‘toe post’ (eurgh) will rub or my flop will flip me out of it as I trip on a discarded iced matcha latte cup. I’d love a gladiator sandal that winds up the calf like a Grecian (or rather that should be Roman) goddess, but mine is more likely to look like a sausage trapped in a hair net. I never thought sandals and Shakespeare would be companions, but every time I’m sizing up sandals, that phrase from Hamlet pops up: ‘ay, there’s the rub.’
Last summer we went to Japan, which turned out to be one of their hottest. I had reservations given the heat and humidity, but it was the only time we could go as a family. We became used to walking around drenched, but there was always the relief of the aircon, and getting on the subway was a joy, words you will never hear deployed in relation to the Tube in London. Our whole family could have been sponsored by Uniqlo for that trip. We hit it in Tokyo and scooped up anything with the word ‘Airism’ on it, down to the pants! A more reserved style of dressing meant that I didn’t have to fret about the curse of spider veins, but it also became the holiday of what my family affectionately termed my ‘potato sack dress.’ This is the sort of utilitarian dressing that the Japanese pull off with cool aplomb, or maybe I could if I could carry off a sharp bob with a very short fringe and sculptural jewellery, but I can’t. However, it was supremely comfortable and cool (in the physical sense).
A heatwave is all well and good if you’re plunging in and out of the pool/surf and have zip all to do other than decide what your next libation is going to be, but it’s not all well and good when you have to get stuff done and live in a house that’s made for winter. This is where I crave an air-conditioned office instead of wfh. Yes, I can work on my laptop in the garden, but I end up daydreaming about the above-mentioned pool/surf.
We have one Dyson air fan in the house and it’s like the Hunger Games. Someone will purloin it in the dead of night for their room, scoring victory, and the rest of us are left to die. The ultimate sacrifice has been made this week. Recognising that my daughter is suffering enough having to revise for GCSEs, now with a heatwave layered on top, in a room that’s like a sauna but without any of the benefits, the family have ceded use of the Dyson to her. That is familial love and sacrifice.
For now though, I am mainly clamped to a wedge of watermelon when not screaming, ‘Who ate all the mini Magnums?’ I continue to make the mistake of ‘cooking’ when opening the oven is like plunging into Dante’s Inferno and, at the end of simple meal prep, I look like I’ve been shovelling coal into a steam engine.
I shall brave town this afternoon in (creased of course) linen trousers and shall return looking like I’ve been paddling down the Amazon. The epitome of not cool.
Summertime boob-sweat is the worst and will summon the heat-rage quicker than quick for me.