🎵 Helter Skelter In a summer swelter 🎵

Why...

Are people so keen to lie in 40c (110f) sun to turn their bodies the colour of condemned veal? Global warming is at last having a visible effect we rich westerners can relate to. Over-hot summers. We still flock to destinations that should only appear in Lucifer’s holiday brochures. But for how long?

...and another thing

I am starting to read about families coming back to Blighty after two days into their fortnight holidays in Spain or Greece. This is usually because they trotted over sand that melted their flip flops or deciding that spit roasting their children as they rotated over their beach towels might not be such a great idea.

...and another thing

Being brought up in Northern climes, even a suggestion of sunlight had my mother winkling me from the indoor warmth of playing with my Scalextric to shivering outside. For months my fingers and lips were a fetching shade of blue. She thought double pneumonia meant a runny nose.

When I first moved to Malta I expected sunshine meant always being outside. It was surely a sin to be inside when it was warm?

However, when the weather is hot enough to poach an egg in my underpants, going outside is left to loony holidaymakers who glow like red hot coals and wonder why they get skin cancer.

Summer for me now means aircon and binge watching on Netflix.

My fellow Maltese do the same, only venturing into the midday cauldron, to overcharge tourists for lunch.

As for my dogs, I nearly had to buy them booties to stop their pads sizzling like hamburgers when they went out for a leak. I just could not thrust the indignity of such apparel onto my pooches. Instead I just hose the patio down but they have to be quick. It evaporates quicker than a stewardesses smile.

...and another thing

A new holiday firm specialising in cool holidays during July and August in Switzerland, Austria and Scandinavia is doing blockbuster business. I noted however the UK was excluded from this Shangri-La of destinations. Global warming in the UK is just warm drizzle. The idea that the English Riviera of Torbay will one day rival its namesake in the south of France is wishful thinking of Walter Mitty-like proportions.

No, at best Global warming will turn the UK into a countrywide sauna. Whether that means we get to whip each other with birch twigs or run around all day naked except for a towel that is too small for the circumference of most British bellies is an open question.

What is certain is we will still hanker spending money with Johnny Foreigner. The pleasure of endless one night stands and throwing up after long nights on ketamine and Aperol Spritzer’s will not be given up lightly.  It will just be in Stavanger rather than Benidorm

Hey ho pip pip

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