How to play it cool

Aug 15 2003 By Nicholas Craig, The Journal

Fifteen years ago Alan Brien said: "If the North-East were only 10 degrees warmer, it would be the playground of Europe."

This summer it came true.

The region's superb beaches were, for once, so crowded there was barely an inch of sand to see. Outdoor attractions such as Beamish and Alnwick Garden enjoyed massive visitor numbers and the routes to rural retreats were jampacked.

Unlike the land-locked counties in the South, which sweltered in oppressive humidity and excessively high temperatures, I reckon our region got it right.

If the run of fine weather is repeated next year, however, I suggest the introduction of a statutory siesta. We may have been baking in the Mediterranean climate, but we continued to behave as though it was about to pour.

I was surrounded by business colleagues in most unsuitable suits. Office lunchtimes notched up a gear as we rushed through normal chores before searching for a seat or spot of grass on which to collapse. Necks burned and tempers flared. We failed to acclimatise.

At the same time rails were buckling and Greggs' takeaway hot lunches were seeing sales melt away in what the company called "unfavourably hot weather". Even ScS wasn't sitting comfortably because of the heat.

Plenty do not like it hot.

What we need to adopt is a cool attitude. That would calm the fractious office disputes and the threatened "summer of strikes". The British stiff upper lip needs to assert itself, instead of wilting into a petulant sulk.

A mini-siesta would see to that.

A statutory hour or two of rest and quiet at mid-day should be triggered by an uninterrupted heat wave of three days, and optimistic forecasts for continuing scorchers from the Met Office.

We could retreat, relax and reassert our famous British reserve on return, when the sun had lost its fierce heat. The campaign will have to start in September, of course, when our energy is back.

The extraordinary summer weather has given us the sort of headlines we love.

The British fascination with the temperature, of which we talk, moan, get nostalgic for summers gone by and predict dramatic ones to come, has given us a daily topic of conversation this year.

A sizzling silly season - if only by degrees centigrade.