The sun has come out to play, but not everyone is celebrating
YES
ZOE STRIMPEL
POOR weather gods. They just can’t win, not in Britain anyway. The age-old refrain on these isles – when other conversation dries up – is how crap the weather is. The rain, the cold, how England is so insufferably depressing it’s a miracle anybody still lives here when Spain is just an hour’s flight away, and so on.
And it’s true. All that rubbish weather does get tiresome. It’s a complete bore, to be confronted by grey skies morning after morning, to be rained on in your lunch break, to be caught between damp, wind and cold for months. London can get away with this appalling weather more than most cities only because of its botanical and archaeological beauty. Even under grey skies, Berkeley Square, Hampstead High Street, and Hyde Park look nice.
But when the sun comes out and the mercury rises, London becomes totally beautiful. There are outdoor lidos for swims, acres of parkland, picnics, riverside pubs, BBQs in little gardens and terraces. That is to say, this city can handle heat just like it can handle cold. It’s not like the cement prison that is New York, or the choking, smog-filled matrix of Beijing. Most workers in London have a traffic-free green space to enjoy a sandwich outside, and most are near beer gardens perfect for a summer’s eve. They should be rejoicing, not moaning.
Yes, the Tube is uncomfortable. But not as bad as a single moment in summertime Delhi or Bangkok or the Middle East. Next year Tubes will have air conditioning, so that inconvenience will be gone. As for hot nights – get a fan, folks. And don’t be afraid to dab cold cloths on your wrists. Enjoy the heat – because it won’t be long until the weather gods change their mind.
NO
TIMOTHY BARBER
THERE comes that giddy moment every spring when you can suddenly take those lunchtime sandwiches outside and find a quiet spot to eat them in the sunshine, returning to the office refreshed and enlivened. And there comes a moment, too, when that same sunshine becomes a blight, bordering on a pestilence, that turns the street into a furnace and the Tube into the seventh circle of hell.
That moment came yesterday. Walking up a crowded Cannon Street in the early afternoon was like wandering among an army of zombified grotesques, as people strained under the searing heat, parched mouths hanging open and eyes screwed up in dismay. We could barely have looked more pathetic if we’d been clawing our way out of the Sahara, dressed only in rags.
No wonder productivity has been predicted to drop by a third this week. People blame it on workers pulling sickies to lap up the rays in the garden, but I think it’s because everyone’s simply in a vile mood. Travelling to work in an oven on wheels – whether train, Tube or bus – is enough to drain anyone of their good spirits, and sitting in the office staring at streets glaring with tropical heat just rubs in the fact you’re not on holiday when you should be. And by the time you make it to that oh-so-now “staycation”, it’ll be back to wind and rain anyway. Great.
Sure, there are cities where it’s like this all the time and they cope – but they’re used to it, and at least know how to dress for it. Here, it’s actually enough to make sweatily-suited men jealous – even covetous – of the strappy tops and airy skirts the ladies get to wear. We’re really no more adept at functioning in these conditions than in that freak February freeze. These are weather extremes – capricious, spiteful, gratuitous extremes for which neither we, nor our city, are built. It’s got me in an extreme grump – and I’m not the only one.