Too darn hot

According to yesterday's newspapers, this week temperatures are expected to be higher than in the Canary Islands and Ibiza. For someone who really struggles in the hot weather, this is rather dismaying news. In fact, it wasn't actually that hot when I read the paper, but this forecast was enough to bring me out in a sweat. Today's headlines state that temperatures could reach 38 degrees, while the late edition Evening Standard reported that tube trains were reaching temperatures of a staggering 47 degrees.

Travelling in the heat is one of my least favourite things. Not only is it really uncomfortable to sit in a non-air conditioned train surrounded by people sweating profusely as the sun beats down relentlessly on the metal outer skins of the carriages with the heat magnified through the windows, but the expected attire for office working just exacerbates the heat. I have wisely started leaving my suit jacket at home, ditched the tie and roll my shirt sleeves up, but it's still not enough. I witnessed some European businessmen on the train last night fully suited and booted, who didn't appear fazed by the heat at all and who didn't even take off their jackets or loosen their ties.

The other week I was invited to an awards ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall, which is of course a prestigious and visually awe-inspiring example of Victorian architecture, and a highly impressive venue in which to entertain clients. The only snag was that the dress code, as always with these stuffy events, called for dinner suits. I caught the train from my hotel on Tottenham Court Road and must have looked like an absolute buffoon with a bow tie and jacket on. All around me were tourists wearing next to nothing while I was completely conspicuous in evening attire. Add to this comic image the glaze of sweat on my brow and you’ll appreciate I’m sure how uncomfortable and embarrassed I felt. Needless to say I shelled out for a cab on the way back. Our company had sponsored the awards and therefore we were entitled to - as in we’d paid for - a drinks reception on the Gallery level. In theory, this was a very good way to impress clients, only the Gallery is of course practically in the roof of the Royal Albert Hall and air conditioning wasn’t even invented when they built the place; and from your science days you will remember that heat rises. Thus we would have probably been cooler partaking of drinks inside hell's own Aga oven.

Part of me wishes that I could have been born of Italian or Spanish stock, mainly because I would then be able to walk around in the hottest weather wearing dark suits and yet staying and looking cool, rather than melting like Wallace and Gromit in an Aardman Animation warehouse fire. I was doomed from the start - my genes are English, French and Danish, which basically means I struggle in the heat but cruelly also find the cold weather unbearable too. There are probably two months per year where I feel completely at ease with the temperature. Mid-July in a heatwave is not one of these.

I love bright, clear days for their sense of optimism and positivity like most people, but when I leave the house at 6.30 AM and it's already too hot, part of me wants to buy a summer house in Iceland, or maybe just head to Iceland (the store) and lie in one of their chest freezers until we get a thunderstorm and cooler weather returns.

I become an absolute nightmare to be with when the temperature soars, as my wife will testify. When I came in from work last night Michelle wasn't having the best of times since our ten-week old daughter - who also doesn't like the heat, that's my girl! - had been screaming for 45 minutes relentlessly. She tried to hug me and I pushed her away because I was so clammy. I just can't help getting moody in the heat; it just makes me so miserable. I can't get comfortable, I can't sleep, I don't want to eat and I don't want to do anything. It's undoubtedly the same for everyone, but I think my fiery temperament - courtesy of having ginger hair, another gift from Denmark - is stoked by high temperatures. I've always been this way in the hot weather, although I think I was blissfully unaffected when I was really small where it was fun to go out and play in the sun. I recall one family holiday where we took a daytrip to Monaco. I completely ruined the experience for everyone, refusing to come out of the shade and not letting my parents take my picture. I skulked around the streets of Monaco with a face like a smacked arse, and generally made it awkward for my parents and sister.

Then there's the other things about the hot weather - sun tan lotion, which I hate with a passion (especially if combined with sand from a beach), wasps, ants, ineffective deodorants, sunburn, plants dying from lack of water, not being able to sleep at night and not being able to stay awake in the day and so on. But travelling by train is still the worst thing. Not only is it unpleasant, particularly if you end up sat next to a fat man (I don't wish to offend anyone, therefore if you are uncomfortable with me using this description, please feel free to read this as 'fat woman') who both cannot stop sweating and also needs to lean against me because he is too large for one train seat, but it is also bloody frustrating for one very clear reason: melting train tracks.

On top of all the other excuses that rail companies trot out to explain poor services – the old chestnuts like ‘leaves on the line’, ‘wrong type of snow’ and all those other classics – it scarcely seems possible that train tracks could soften, melt and buckle in the heat, but it happens whenever the temperature ticks over 30 degrees; temperatures which aren't out of the ordinary for the UK during summer anymore. At great effort, disruption and expense, Network Rail relaid the entire track on the West Coast Mainline (which I have the displeasure of using every day). One would have perhaps assumed that ‘modernising’ would have included laying tracks capable of withstanding intense temperatures, just like the ones they must have in other parts of the world; but no, within weeks of completing one section of track and enduring coaches for parts of the journey, trains were subject to delay and speed restriction because of the heat. Marvellous! Does this make you think that the investment into relaying the tracks on the West Coast Mainline was perhaps done on the cheap? Only the other week I was at a lunch in Bristol where I mentioned that the train tracks might melt in the heat; my fellow diners laughed at me like I was mad (they drive everywhere, hence could be regarded as train novices). That very day my journey back from Bristol to home was marred by several speed restrictions from Bristol to Paddington, a complete collapse of the tube network because of softened rails, and then further speed restrictions on the West Coast Mainline.

Iceland is looking more and more tempting every day.