Top tip to stay cool: don’t read the news
If you’re already feeling a little soft around the centre from temperatures above 40 degrees – the melting point of the average Brit: 39 degrees. It’s a fact!* – then here are some top tips to help you stay cool.
The first tip is the most important. You must cover your doors and windows. This will reduce the chance of hearing Prince Harry’s “sermon of doom” which he gave at the UN this week. It covered every apocalyptic forecast while ignoring the damage that aimless celebs can do to the environment every time they leave their gated, air-conditioned Montecito homes.
Plug your ears. It is another proven way to keep cool. That way you won’t get hot listening to the Prime Minister elevating Bannonite “deep state” conspiracy gibberish at the Despatch Box. This time he claimed that the Labour Party, in power for 30 out of the last 87 years (and not in power since 2010), are really “the establishment”. You also won’t have to listen to everybody from Edward Leigh to Quentin Letts, separated by about an inch on the great political beach towel, complaining that it was actually that evil Keir Starmer demeaning politics by giving, in Letts’ words, one of the “most grindingly acidic speeches I have seen in Commons”. Starmer had made the glaring faux pas of using a confidence vote in the government to suggest that the recently ousted PM might not… you know…have the confidence of the people. If you plug your ears, you won’t hear any of that.
Is the sun a bit too hot? Then don’t watch or read the news. That way you can avoid seeing the same Prime Minister skipping Cobra meetings to go looping the loop in an RAF Typhoon at unknown costs to you, the taxpayer. Unless he’s working some high-level rain voodoo or seeding clouds with silver iodide, he should be in No 10 arranging ways to stop the M1 from melting and slipping into the sea.
Put a damp towel over your head. This is especially important for the old and vulnerable (aka Tory MPs) who are particularly feeling the heat because of all the leadership candidates whispering hot promises into their ears.
Turn off electronic devices. It will help everybody avoid the Tory leadership contest. The quality of the candidates is only going to make you go red under the collar. By the same logic: don’t watch the January 6th hearings. The scale of Donald Trump’s criminality will cause you to flush.
When out in public, don’t claim to be in the navy when you’re merely in the reserve. Also, don’t make a big show of gender rights and then claim to be focused on the matters that people worry about the most. The collective howl of hot outrage will not keep you cool.
Perhaps it’s also better if you don’t claim to have been a hard-working burger flipper on minimum wage while paying taxes in 1996, four years before the minimum wage was introduced and on wages too low to pay taxes. Better yet: stop playing the “working class” card when you’re from an extremely privileged background. This will help the entire nation avoid meltdown.
Do not travel to Moldova on official business. Being stripped of the Tory Whip might annoy you and no amount of air conditioning is going to reduce that.
Speaking of which: don’t admit to anybody if you do have air conditioning and be very careful not to mention it to a Guardian journalist. They will shame 20lbs off your body.
Avoid social media. Nothing to do with the weather. It’s just good practical sense.
And don’t forget at night to put out a bowl of water filled with pebbles. As Nadine Dorries is quick to remind us, this isn’t a political point. Hedgehogs need our help in the summer months. Also, Nadine Dorries is going to need our help in the summer months. All job offers considered.
Lastly, don’t read lists about how to cope with the heat. Unless you are willing to dip your extremities in bowls of ice water and wear soggy clothes, they will sound like methods of torture and/or the minutes to the last meeting of the 1922 Committee.
Just remember to stay cool out there. There’s a lot of hot air about.
* Not a fact.