Nobbut Laiking, by Ross Brewster
Hot water bottle filled. Throw me another jumper while you’re at it. This is the English summer in all its globally warmed glory.
The other night, watching the football on the telly, I wore a T shirt, ordinary shirt, sweatshirt, woolly jumper and dressing gown. Even with the water bottle and caressing a cup of hot chocolate to warm my hands, I was pickled.
Look, I’m not a climate change denier. There have been too many bizarre weather events in different parts of the world to explain it all as chance.
But what happened to Britain? Bournemouth was supposed to be like the Sahara by 2025. We were told that thousands of southerners would come flocking to areas like the Lakes and Highlands with their camel trains to escape the searing heat and sand storms.
Activists armed with cans of orange paint, blocking the motorways and daubing works of art as they head for the hills, stopping only to lecture us that it’s all our stupid fault for owning cars and washing machines.
Silloth was to be the new Benidorm by 2030 and after a month of sun we could expect the Met Office to issue dire warnings about only travelling if our journeys were absolutely necessary.
It was going to be hosepipe bans, reservoirs running dry and trains halted by the wrong kind of sun on the tracks.
Not this year matey. We’re not going to need a Minister for Rain to demonstrate how to share the bath water with his good lady like that MP Denis Howell back in the sun kissed 70s.
What is it they say about Scotland. July is summer, the rest of the year is winter. The Cumbrian equivalent is the saying that if you can’t see the fells it’s raining and if you can it’s going to rain.
Maybe it’s my age and I’m feeling the chill, but I can’t remember a July when I had to switch the heating back on. So much for promised relief from those hefty winter bills.
There’s still time for brighter skies. But I won’t be sacrificing the trusty hot water bottle just yet.
Famous in their own worlds
These names mean anything to you? Tatyana Ozalina, Catalanina Gutierrez and a bloke in China called Pan Xiaoting, who has just eaten himself to death on 22lb of chicken, seafood and chocolate cake, videoed for the delight of his millions of online followers.
No? Neither do they mean anything to me. Yet the first two boasted a combined online audience of 15 million and the Beijing trencherman no doubt had many more before making the supreme sacrifice.
Last week my newspaper carried a section on “famous” people who died in July. Famous in their own worlds, but not to me. I barely recognised a single name in the list of fallen actors, TV presenters, entertainers, reality show performers and, the largest category of all, influencers.
Tatyana killed herself in a motor cycling accident in Turkey last week. She formerly blogged for her numerically impressive online readership as “the most beautiful biker”.
Tatyana, Catalanina and the Chinese gentleman were all influencers, great favourites of GenZ who live their lives by direction from these stars of the internet.
I am assuming that most of this column’s regular readers have long since waved farewell to eligibility for GenZ. For us being under the influence has totally different connotations.
But for an entrepreneurial teenager there’s money to be made if you can capture an audience of kids of similar age who are interested in clothes, make-up and music. I saw an interview with one teenage influencer who spoke of product placing and testing and an online big sister type exchange of youthful angst.
At least I think that’s what influencers do. But perhaps, as another birthday rolls by like prizes on the Generation Game conveyor belt, it’s a country I have less of a place in.
I do remember an editor once telling me my words carried great influence among local councillors, but I suspect that’s different. And it pre-dated social media when few would have predicted a time when people would be wedded to mobile phones and the wisdom of kids barely out of school.
Cold comfort
One good thing about a chilly summer. The rescue helicopters and air ambulance which regularly fly over my Lake District residence, are not suffering the sort of problems affecting rescue services in America’s Death Valley.
There they find it impossible to take off and remain airborne in temperatures of 49 degrees Celsius. The air is too thin to provide the lift they need.
The result is that rescuers on foot have to brave the blistering heat to assist casualties.
Thank goodness it was cool on the first weekend of the school summer holidays. No fewer than nine out of 12 rescue teams in the Lake District were called into action along with RAF Leeming’s mountain resume service and the high fliers of the air ambulance and the Coastguard.
When it was described as “unprecedentedly busy” you think to yourself if this was Death Valley there would be nothing but a few pools of sweat left to mark rescuers’ presence.
