You know things are bad when the Parisians wish they were Londoners. As I write this, the temperature in our capital is hovering at around 34 degrees — a quite frankly Arctic state of affairs when compared to Paris’s 41 degree furnace. They’ve even taken to swimming in the river over there — something only advisable in London if you’d like to lose a lot of weight very quickly, which would actually help with the whole heat thing, now I think about it, so do crack on. But in lieu of the good old dysentery diet, here are five slightly less legally-actionable recommendations for staying cool during the current heatwave.
Supplies of electric fans are said to be running low across the capital — so why not turn the city into your own personal Dyson Airblade instead, by moving your body through it as fast as humanly possible? Red lights, as all Lime Bikers know, are more like gentle serving suggestions than anything legally mandated, and most police officers will understand if you run down a pensioner at a zebra crossing this week if it means you avoid sweat patches on your new Emmett shirt.
This highly original and completely fascinating drinks order will keep your body temperature low while also signalling to people that you once went to Biarritz.
The wall of heat that currently greets you every time you exit your house is much more agreeable if you imagine that it is the same one encountered on exiting your Ryanair flight to Florence, when the jeans that seemed so appropriate in Gatwick Terminal Two now feel like chainmail jodhpurs, but in a fun way. In southern Europe, you see, the evident horrors of climate change are not terrifying harbingers of our eventual extinction, but simply chic excuses for gelato. The Dolce Vita? More like the Dolce Heat-a!
Pretty self-explanatory this one, and with enough built-in plausible deniability to create a good 15 minutes of chill time, once you factor in the question of Magnum vs Feast, the undeniable shrinkflation of the Fruit Pastille lolly, the Proustian power of the strawberry Mini Milk, and whether a man can ever truly enjoy a Calippo with another man.
At least, this seems to be the choice made by 90% of the people contacting me today, a move which really makes me feel better inclined towards the latest press release about Argos’s new range of affordable lawn-mowers. One day soon, as the temperature in London soars past 80 degrees and all recognisable life is extinguished in a furnace of our own creation, the final message sent out by humanity will be a Deliveroo newsletter with the subject line “Armaggedon Hungry!”
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Issue 20
Fresh from a Tuscan honeymoon and already suffering serious pasta withdrawal, I’ve turned to London’s flourishing crop of new Italian restaurants. From elegant osterias to bustling trattorias, these are five of the capital’s most exciting openings.
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