The Plant
It is one thing enjoying the sunshine — as roses do, for instance, and
delphiniums, which flower better for not having their blooms rained on — but
there are other plants that truly love to bask in blazing sun. In the
Mediterranean they include aromatic cistus, rosemary and brooms, but the
best of the lot for high summer in English gardens must be lavender.
You could regard lavender’s grey foliage as being coated in Factor 15,
reflecting the sun’s rays and allowing the plant to lie unharmed in the
midday sun. The hotter the weather, the greyer the foliage. Just think of
Provence, where lavender rows stripe the rolling, stony fields; no mulch is
used on the bare soil; the hotter it gets, the greater the amount of
aromatic oils. The plants’ roots will have gone deep into the ground where
there is water to be had.
Grey foliage is common in heat-tolerant plants. It is often made up of a layer
of fine hairs which, in a colder, wetter climate such as ours, can trap
water and lead to winter damage. Lavender itself is leathery and, as with
rosemary, the leaves are narrow and needle-like to minimise water loss.
Stephen Anderton
The animal
She has bobbly horns, a bristly upper lip and can pick her nose with her
tongue. At 31, Crackers is the old lady of the giraffe enclosure at London
Zoo. Her keeper, Jeff Nicklin, is trying to get her to act summery.
Nuzzling her lips with his nose, whispering sweet nothings in her nostril, he
urges her to lick a cabbage ice lolly. “Cracks! Don’t be awkward. It’ll do
you good, sweetheart. You like cabbage, don’t you?” Crackers lifts her neck
disdainfully.
We are here to see how the animals respond to the heatwave. For giraffes,
evolved to roam the African savannah, surely 30C is a joyful reminder of
home?
But no. Crackers has refused to go out all day. “The thing is,” Nicklin says,
“these are zoo-bred: they’re happy in all weathers.”
It is time to try elsewhere. We hear a rumour that the otters are basking, but
when we arrive they are fighting in the pond. The bearded pigs are about to
have a shower, a ritual reserved for the hottest days. With a great bellow
they run into the spray from their keeper’s hosepipe. Some manifest their
delight by attacking a log, some by attacking each other. One drinks his
friend’s wee. They all have a good scratch. But they are happy because the
water is making them cool. Isn’t there one animal that likes heat for heat’s
sake?
There is, and his name is Raja. Raja is not naturally charismatic.
Occasionally he eats a chicken. Sometimes he moves his head. But today it is
warm enough to go outside. He celebrates by sticking half his body out of
his enclosure. His rear half.
He’ll still be there if you go to see him — half in, half out, thinking about
next month’s chicken. Raja the Komodo dragon, the happiest animal in the zoo.
Tom Whipple
Waxing
The sun is shining and a woman’s thoughts turn to . . . hair. Or, more
precisely, how to get rid of it. Otylia Roberts, the woman who brought
Brazilian waxing to the UK, sees a direct correlation between the weather
and her profits. “The sun brings business to the salon straight away,” she
says. Well, it makes sense; winter hides a multitude of hairy secrets but
once the sun comes out immediate hair removal is called for.
In fact this rule no longer applies only to women. Male waxing is on the
increase, with beauty salons such as The Refinery in Mayfair, London,
established to cater for their needs. Waxing, the art of semi-permanent hair
removal that involves a hefty cost, several pounds of steaming gloop and
plenty of anguished yelps, has become a beauty trend in itself. Roberts, who
says that 60 per cent of her business is sun-related, claims that it was Sex
and the City that made waxing such a hot topic. The girls didn’t just want a
half-leg and a centimetre off the bikini line. Even Charlotte, Roberts
recalls, wanted it all off — and so the delicate-sounding Playboy Wax (no
explanation needed) was born. Even our collective British prudishness could
not impede its growth. Naturally, summer is the most popular time for a wax.
Alice Olins
The ice cream seller
The British get very excited over a spell of hot weather; ice cream sellers
are rather more circumspect. Whatever we may imagine, one weekend scorcher
does not to them a summer make.
“What makes ice cream sell is warm weather over a long period of time,” says
Toby Roskilly, the managing director of Roskilly’s, an organic ice cream
maker based at Tregellast Barton in Cornwall. “One weekend of boiling
weather isn’t make or break for our industry, to be honest. There has to be
three or four months of it to make a really good impact.”
Not that they are complaining; the recent sweltering temperatures have
resulted in a sales spike 40 per cent up on the same week last June. Talk of
an extended mini-heatwave is music to all ice cream sellers’ ears. Roskilly
is monitoring the seven-day forecast closely, as it always does, and will
bring in additional vans, put extra drivers on standby and order more
ingredients to meet increased demand.
Roskilly supplies retailers all over the country, making 45 flavours of ice
cream with milk from its Jersey cows. In Cornwall the trade is highly
dependent on people flocking to the beach, unlike set attractions in other
parts of the country where there will always be tourists whatever the
weather. Hot weather also needs to last through the weekend to be of optimum
use to the ice cream seller.
Ice cream consumption is not simply about cooling down with a 99 cone;
it is linked to the national mood. “People are happier, more laid-back, when
the sun is shining,” says Roskilly. “They are happier about parting with
their money and treating themselves to an ice cream.”
Carol Midgley
The community
Adriana Lopez, 35, holds up a pair of bright orange bikini bottoms: “That is
for English.” Then she holds up what appears to be a small orange sticking
plaster. “And that is for Brazilians.”
Harlesden in West London has a high concentration of expat Brazilians but
there is no escaping the fact that both sea and sand (building sites
excepted) are in short supply here. Nonetheless, as soon the temperature
begins to rise, the Brazilian community cannot but heed the hard-wired
cultural yen to fire up the barbecue and take off their clothes.
Kelly Buzzatto, 30, is in the New Brazilian Hair salon that she manages. “Now
with this [she waves a hand at the sweltering high street] it is the same as
Brazil,” she says. “It makes us happy. We make barbecue every day. We go to
the beach.” To the beach? Bournemouth has become an Anglo-Brazilian hot
spot, it seems, because of the quality of the sand, although “the water is
much too cold”.
Adriana Lopez runs the Be Gostosa (translation: Be Gorgeous) Brazilian bikini
shop on Harlesden’s High Street. In the past fortnight, she says, she has
been cleaned out of her entire stock of Fil Dental (translation: dental
floss) bikini bottoms, the cut favoured by young Brazilian women. “This, for
us, is shorts,” she explains. “You guys do topless, which we don’t. We are
bottomless.”
Outside the Brazilian café, its owner, Luis Lemes, 31, is drinking a Guarana,
the imported soft drink that outsells Coca-Cola in his establishment.
“People become much happier, the sun changes them,” he says. “Nobody ever
complains.”
Luke Leitch
Some don’t like it hot
Police Studies have indicated that hot weather leads to a
greater incidence of street violence and domestic abuse, possibly because of
raised serotonin levels in the brain. In 18th-century Italy the sirocco —
the hot summer wind — was even considered a defence in court. Things tend to
level off at 32C, when even lifting a half-brick becomes a real effort.
Older women “Older women appear to be more vulnerable to the
effects of heat than older men, possibly due to having fewer sweat glands
and being more likely to live on their own,” says the NHS, actually quite
rudely.
Sunbed operators Like trying to sell ice when it’s hailing.
Binmen Hard work, bad smell. See also: purveyors of cheese.
Computers Heat makes them cranky, stupid and slow. Unless you
are fighting an alien race of robots bent on world domination, this is
really annoying.
Ice-sculptors Obviously.
Babies Experts recommend keeping infants at between 16C and
20C.
Roads Roads melt more often than you would imagine. Earlier
this month, a man in Manchester got his foot stuck in a syrupy one for
almost an hour.
Braemar
They could use a bit of Vitamin D in Braemar, Aberdeenshire. Nestling under
the Cairngorms, this is officially the coldest settlement in the UK, with
minus 27.2C recorded in both 1895 and 1982. In the winter they probably wear
jeans under their kilts.
“A bit of sun is good for morale,” says Simon Blackett at the Invercauld
Estate, which offers field sports, golf and hill-walking. “On a sunny day we
get more motorbikes outside the café, more campers from the cities.” If it
gets too hot, visitors can have a dip in the Dee. “That’s why the Braemar
climate is so great,” he adds. “Cold winters and hot summers.”
It’s 16C in Braemar today, although locals boast that it can get as high as
18C (only 5C colder than Helsinki). Which may explain why the Queen, who
spends much of the summer at nearby Balmoral, always seems to wear tweed and
a hat.
Hugo Rifkind
What sells in the sun
Leg wax sales Increase up to 14-fold, the biggest impact of
hot weather on any retail item, closely followed by hair removal cream Flea
treatment The critters get busy in hot weather Roast chicken
sandwiches For some reason, chicken feels summery Bread rolls All
those barbies Trampolines Anything to get the kids off your back
while you’re preparing the barbie
What doesn’t
Beef sandwiches Perhaps because the meat is associated with
Sunday roasts Coffee Tea is more thirst-quenching Cat food
Kitty goes off her food in hot weather. Or maybe she just feels lousy
because of the fleas Hot motorway service station meals Sales plummet
at precisely 20C Fizzy drinks At 23C (73F) sweet fizzy drinks sales
go flat but bottled water soars
Paul Simons
