The great escape: where to go
Britain has a very hot week ahead, but not all of Britain. If you’re in the south-east corner of the country, or the Midlands, you’ll get what the Met Office calls a level three heatwave. “This stage requires social and healthcare services to target specific actions at high-risk groups,” it says. Wednesday and Thursday in particular could be extremely hot, perhaps exceeding 33C (91F).
Meanwhile, those softies in Wales, Scotland, and northern and south-western England will be basking in the comparative comfort of a level two. So if you really can’t stand the heat, now that the schools are breaking up, consider a visit to chilly Devon or soggy Glasgow – or perhaps to Lerwick in Shetland, where it won’t get above 18C all week. In the long-term, though, we’ll probably all have to get used to the heat.
Night fever: how to sleep
For many people, hot nights are far worse than hot days. What’s more, according to Prof George Havenith of Loughborough University: “We know that loss of sleep can have quite an impact on people’s ability to cope with heat [the following day].”
With planning, however, you can make things easier. “The first thing is, you don’t want your house to get too hot in the daytime,” Havenith says. Keep your curtains closed all day until about 6pm, to reduce the effect of the sun on the indoor air. “Then in the evening, open all the windows as much as possible, so you get a draught, which will cool it down again.” If your home has more than one level, it will probably be hotter upstairs, so opening windows top and bottom will help flush the heat out. For the same reason, you might find it easier to sleep downstairs.
Screen time: protect your skin
Hot weather feels like such a treat in the UK that it is easy to get caught out. While Northern Ireland licked ice-creams, 220 people over the past two months were so badly burned that they were treated in hospital.
Shade is best, and sunscreen is OK, but only if you use it properly. “Most people are not putting on nearly as much as they should,” says Prof Kamila Hawthorne, a vice-chair at the Royal College of General Practitioners, and a GP herself in Cardiff. For adults, she recommends seven teaspoons: “One for each arm and leg, one for your front, one for your back, one for your face and neck.” If you’re bald, you might need an extra teaspoon.
But remember: sunscreen only slows the damage down. If your unprotected skin would burn in 10 minutes, say, then applying factor 30 means that it will take 30 x 10 minutes – so you need to keep reapplying. It’s also easy for people with darker skin to get complacent. “I’m a British Asian,” says Hawthorne, “and I burn in British sun.”
Child care: how to keep kids happy
“You really shouldn’t leave your children out in the sun at all,” Hawthorne warns. “Children’s skin is very sensitive. They burn easily, especially babies.” In practice, making children stay indoors or in the shade for an entire sunny day in the holidays can feel like neglect of a different kind, so make sure they have hats, keep them topped up with high-factor sunscreen and plan a portion of the day in the shade, especially between 11am and 3pm. Thankfully, hellish soft-play warehouses are now available in industrial estates across the country. Or, for once, you could feel you were taking them to the cinema on doctor’s orders.
Children should also drink regularly and often, not just when they feel thirsty. “A baby might need more fluid,” says Hawthorne. “You might want to supplement milk with some boiled [and cooled] water. Exclusively breastfed babies should not need any additional fluids. If you feel your baby is becoming dehydrated, you should contact your GP surgery. And you’ll definitely want to keep that baby in the shade.”
Running on empty: ease up on exercise
Even young, fit people can suffer serious harm if they push themselves too far in hot weather. In 2013, three soldiers died during a summer training march in the Breacon Beacons. “Only run in the early morning or the the evening, when it’s cool,” says Havenith. “You have to look after your hydration levels, of course. But if you go for an hour’s run in these conditions in the middle of the day, you are really putting yourself at risk.”
The risk is heat exhaustion, at which point your sweating and blood flow start to fail and you begin to feel woozy and confused, which makes it harder to be sensible and stop. After that comes heatstroke, when the proteins in your body begin to cook, causing severe and lasting damage. “A colleague of mine always used to say, ‘Once you’ve cooked an egg, you can’t uncook it,’” Havenith warns. And, of course, people with underlying health conditions can die for other reasons before they reach this point.
Cool it: make the most of air conditioning
Few Britons have air conditioning in their homes, but many supermarkets and shopping centres do, so perhaps bring your shopping forward and linger in the freezer aisle. The journey could be an excuse to use the air conditioning in your car, too.
Failing that, at home, take a cool shower. “It doesn’t have to be ice-cold,” says Havenith. “That should last you for an hour or two … Or a lot of people take a wet towel and put it round their neck.” Don’t expect miracles from eating chillies: the sweating they induce does cool you slightly, “but I wouldn’t expect massive effects,” says Havenith.
Fresh air: use your fans wisely
There’s no doubt a fan can help, but there is an art to this. “The first thing is to try to draw the cool air into your room,” Havenith says. At night, if the air outside is cooler, but there’s no inward breeze, he recommends putting a fan in front of the window to pull it in. “Otherwise, have a fan moving around slightly.” This circulates air, which helps your body cool down. If you really mean business, put on wet clothes and stand in front of the fan.
Chill out: how to keep calm
In some cultures, rioting is as much a part of summer as televised football tournaments and soft fruit. And it is certainly good rioting weather now. Recent research from Poznan University in Poland suggests that hot weather might be, in itself, more stressful. And indeed, if recent reports can be believed, Britain is already experiencing a kind of war between its seagulls and the human population. So we all might need some ways to calm down.
Having no football to watch will help, of course. Killing seagulls, as practised by an unidentified man in Weston-super-Mare, is not a good idea. It is also a criminal offence. Killing mosquitoes, on the other hand, is perfectly legal. Indeed, it’s practically a public service. Grab a swatter and let it all out.
Age concern: consider old people
The heatwave of August 2003 caught France unprepared, killing nearly 15,000 people, most of them elderly. The problem is not merely that old people are frailer, or less able to get help. As we age, our bodies lose some of their ability to detect and respond to temperature. “They don’t sense the heat as well, so they don’t respond as quickly to it,” Havenith says. “They produce less sweat, compared with younger people. They dehydrate more because their thirst stimulus doesn’t work as well.”
In short, older people can’t just wait until they feel ill. They should know the risks and look after themselves, or be looked after, from the outset.
Hot topic: talk about something else!
There comes a point, after a month of almost relentless drought, when an entire nation dressed in vests and sunglasses can start presuming that certain facts are widely known. Namely: a) that the weather is hot, b) that it is arguably too hot “for me”, c) that weather experts believe that it will get hotter soon, or perhaps cool down. There is no need to say all this again.
Conversations still need to be started somehow, though. So, the next time you encounter someone in a lift, in the office kitchen or wherever, try starting with: “Ah, I see we’ve got a waxing gibbous moon tonight.” Or, if that’s too bland, try: “Do you think people should be allowed to murder seagulls?”
• This article was amended on 25 July 2018 to augment the information about caring for babies in hot weather.
