This Side of the Pond

When I say the Brits can’t cope with the heat, I’m not kidding. While Wyoming baked in 104-degree weather last Monday, most of the UK was suffering through exactly the same temperatures.

But unlike us, my home nation had to get by with no air conditioning and bodies conditioned for light rain while relying on a countrywide infrastructure system that was not designed to handle a real summer. Why would it have been, when we’d never had one?

Our homes are built to trap the heat and don’t come pre-installed with AC, partly because so many of them pre-date the invention of electricity and partly because it’s never been necessary in a country where a “nice summer day” is somewhere around the 75-degree mark.

Until now, that is. Temperature records tumbled across the country, with six places reaching temperatures of 104 degrees, including St. James’s Park, Kew Gardens, Northolt and Heathrow in London and Gringley On The Hill in Nottinghamshire.

According to the Met Office, July 19 was the hottest day on record by a long shot – 104.5 degrees was the highest temperature recorded, in Coningsby, Lincolnshire, toppling the previous high of 101.6.

Personally, I’d have just sat in the bath until the weather broke – I’ve done it before, and I’d do it again. London’s tall, closely packed buildings are excellent at trapping heat, both from the sun and from the millions of other human bodies sharing your space.

I’m not a fan of hot weather in the first place, but I’ll never forget the one year that temperatures reached the high 90s while I was living in a London apartment that had no outdoor space. We were located above a busy takeout restaurant, which didn’t help, and it didn’t seem to matter how many windows we opened, it was impossible to coax a breeze through our rooms. I maintain that my bath sitting was the only sensible decision.

The London Underground is also well-known for being torturous in hotter weather, so it was surely the least pleasant place on the planet last week: badly ventilated train carriages in hot, stuffy tunnels that are virtually uninhabitable during a normal summer, crammed in and pressed against a dozen equally overheated strangers.

One station had to close because they thought it was on fire, though it turned out that not even the escalators were capable of coping and had starting billowing smoke.

Transport For London places warnings in every station during the summer that you should always fetch a bottle of water before descending into Hades, but I doubt it provided much relief when the carriages had essentially transformed into ovens.

Some companies issued shelter at home notices, but a lot of Londoners braved the route to work anyway. Why? Because modern office buildings, cinemas and malls are about the only place you’re likely to find air conditioning in the UK.

Even our politicians were overcome by the weather. Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay Hoyle actually announced – and you’ll want to sit down for this one – that it would be ok for members of parliament to – I’m sorry, this is really going to be upsetting for my more sensitive readers – remove their jackets.

“What next?” exclaimed Defense Secretary Ben Wallace. “Flip flops?”

Over at Buckingham Palace, the most British of scenes was unfolding. The palace guards – recognizable for the red uniforms and tall, fluffy hats made from Canadian bearskin – were not doing well.

Unfortunately, the other thing they are famous for is never moving, so there wasn’t a lot they could do about it. Photos began to emerge of them marching water to one another…on fancy trays, in bone china cups.

At the Royal Victoria Hospital, the heat was becoming unbearable. Despite being a hospital, which means infection control and keeping patients warm are two of the big things on their daily to-do list, they made the decision to fling open all the doors and windows.

According to one observer, the building was full of seagulls within ten minutes.

My people’s inability to do summer usually makes me chuckle, but this heatwave wasn’t all about the usual farce and fun. Tarmac-covered roads, including highways and motorways, buckled under the heat.

Several airports closed as their runways began to dissolve, including one that belongs to the Royal Air Force. Near King’s Cross, the lights at a level crossing simply melted.

Unsurprisingly, considering the impact to infrastructure, rail services shut down all over the place. Passengers were still trying to get where they needed to go the next day, packing out the train stations like overheated sardines.

London Fire Brigade is said to have received more than 2600 calls on Tuesday alone. According to the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, it was the most hectic day for the fire service since World War II.

“Normally we get 350 calls a day, on a busy day we can get up to 500 calls,” he told BBC Radio 4. Off-duty firefighters volunteered to come back in as the service was pushed closer and closer to its limits.

Assistant Commissioner Jonathan Smith, said it was a humbling experience because the firefighters had never before had to operate in such high temperatures – 16 ended up being taken to hospital with heat-related injuries. They’ll be making some changes moving forward, he said, as this likely won’t be the last time it happens.

But they got it done, because that’s what firefighters do – miracles in the face of infernos. Every grass, tree and structure fire across the capital was brought under control, even the one in Wennington, where rows of homes were completely destroyed, and a huge blaze by the side of a busy motorway.

The Wennington fire was a particular nail-biter. Most of the village had been evacuated when reports started to come in that an older gentleman hadn’t been able to get out past the cordon in time.

According to national news sources, he was digging a trench around his home in efforts to keep the flames away. Fortunately, the police were able to get through the nightmare of smoke and fire to evacuate him to safety.

The storms eventually came, as they always do, bringing their own weather warnings as the cold front slammed through the heat. I doubt my countrymen have ever been so relieved to see a raincloud, and I don’t blame them – we’d take drizzle and half-hearted sunshine over last week’s nonsense any day.