How to behave in a heatwave

The author Maggie O’Farrell wrote her bestselling novel, Instructions for a Heatwave, while living in Edinburgh, which doesn’t tend to get very hot. But her backdrop was the 1976 scorcher which saw hosepipe bans, a Minister for Drought (Denis Howell) and Brits sweltering in all corners of the country, even Scotland.

This week’s high temperatures seem more south-east centric but the one constant with the 70s — and O’Farrell’s narrative — is that people tend to behave differently when the weather upsets them.

Extreme temperatures call for extreme measures, and even Royal Ascot conceded to the heat this week, the hottest day of the year so far, relaxing its strict rules for men’s attire.

With a forecast of 31C (87.7F) on the final day of the race meeting, men were permitted to remove their ties and (gasp) their jackets, but only after the royal procession at 2 pm. Socks still had to be worn with shoes.

Usually, in a heatwave, men have it easier; while they may whip off their tops — and far too many of them do — women are frowned upon if they flaunt their flesh.

This doesn’t necessarily stop many of us from fishing out the holiday frocks or (God forbid) shorts and — a singularly British crime — wearing sandals with unprepared winter toenails.

Despite the warming climate, temperate Britons still haven’t cottoned on to the continental approach to endless blue skies.

On a recent trip to Florence, my daughter’s half-Italian friend scolded her for her inappropriate wardrobe. Though indeed skimpy, it was apparently not conservative enough for Florence.

I was slightly outraged by this (unsuccessful, as it happened) attempt at censorship. I don’t remember the Florentines, from my inter-railing days, being particularly prudish, and I’m sure we wore as little as we could get away with.

Maybe today’s 21-year-olds have more decorum, I thought, but then I found myself encouraging a friend’s twentysomething, staying with us for a few days, to exchange her barely-there dress for cover-up jeans for a stifling walk by the river.

Unaccustomed in this country to routine heatwaves, we over-react by stripping off, then recoil at the sights we make of ourselves. 

Yet we can get it right if we try, as Ascot’s Ladies Day showed on Thursday. From the practised royals to the awayday crowd, there was scarcely a frill or a fascinator out of place.

Negotiating sartorial challenges in the summer heat is nothing, though, compared to the pitfalls of garden (should you be so lucky to have one) etiquette for people normally confined to their indoor silos. 

A retired friend complained to me that his hobby, gardening, had become awkward now that the people next door were always outside. Not only the temperatures, but the work-from-home orthodoxy in some jobs, had transformed his peaceful backyard into a social minefield: “They’re out there all the time, and I can feel them watching me. I don’t know whether to talk to them or just pretend they’re not there,” he said.

Living on top of each other, overlooked and overheard, we must develop strategies for such unavoidable close encounters so that everyone can enjoy their outdoor spaces.

I recommended getting to know the neighbours, and perhaps inviting them round for a drink, to break the ice. How long had they been there? “Twenty years,” said my pal, a not untypical specimen at the upper reaches of the British reserve spectrum.

At the other end of the scale, there is a tendency towards outdoor exhibitionism. Should my sister look over her fence — and I’m not saying she does — she might spot naked neighbours, given the presence of a hot tub, an increasingly popular garden feature in the London suburbs.

In the public domain, we appear to have even less control and as temperatures soar, so do passions. Who has not been confronted by the harmless, but nevertheless tiresome, displays of conspicuous affection, as frisky couples colonise city parks, their British inhibitions melted by the rising mercury?

However, the real downside to all the lovely warm days is the phenomenon of “sun’s out, creeps out”, as my daughter’s generation puts it; the spectacle of young bodies in light clothing is, it seems, a pest trigger.

Psychologists have investigated the link between heat and aggression, with some studies confirming that violent crime increases with temperature.

The civil riots that raged throughout the US in the 1960s gave rise to the expression “long hot summer”. According to the American psychologist Frank T McAndrew, this phrase reflected the common belief that hot weather made people behave aggressively. “However, it is hard to say for sure if heat was directly causing the problem,” he wrote in Psychology Today. 

“It’s possible, for example, that in warmer weather there are simply more people out and about, resulting in more interaction and a greater likelihood of getting swept up in whatever ruckus might be occurring in the neighbourhood.”

For Brits reaching boiling point, there is a simple remedy — rain. Our hot spells are not usually long enough, or frequent enough, to incite social upheaval, next week’s rail strike and a threatened summer of discontent notwithstanding. Stay cool.