Hot? This isn't hot, did i ever tell you about....

Good evening Reeking Lums,

I speak to you tonight, from a coke oven in death valley, the mercury is hitting a ton 20 and my toes now resemble Rancheros.

Christ it's hot.

Its a common trait of the 40 something male to compare everything that happens today, with a multitude of reference points in the 70s. So, winters are never as bad these days, because "one February night when I was a boy, it snowed so hard, we couldn't see the milk bottles in the morning", or, " Summers aren't the same as when I was young, it was so hot the railway tracks used to curl up and there wasn't a drop of rain between 1976 and the winter of discontent, that's why we were so discontent"

I cant remember it being this hot though. My Android weather forecasting app says that in Lewisham, right now at 7.30pm, its 31 degrees and sunny. I looked up Glasgow earlier today and it said, 13 degrees and, dreary. Not overcast, or intermittently cloudy, but dreary.

Do you see how far artificial intelligence has come, they are using sympathetic descriptors now. They know we like to talk about the weather, so to get friendly with us, and lull us into that sense of security they need, there going to start saying things like that, and, "Oooh, the nights are fair drawing in" and "Mind, ne'er cast a cloot, till May is oot" . Then, collectively one night, they will persuade us all to stay indoors with our electrical appliances unplugged because of the lightening, then that's when they make there move.

What I do remember about the summers of the early 70s was the joy of taking a trip in the car, all dressed up in my shorts and sandals, jumping into the back seat, no seat belts or child car seats to worry about then.

I remember breathing in a lungful of superheated air as the car door opened, then waking up in the hospital burns unit getting the vinyl seats removed from the backs of my little pipe cleaner legs. The backs of my legs have so many plastic seating designs burnt into them,they must look like a pair of Vivian Westwood drainpipes.

I haven't had a steam iron applied to any part of my body, I am sure I would remember if I had, but it cant be any worse than sitting bare legged on the vinyl seats of a Ford Anglia that's been sitting in the July sun all day.

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that in Guantanamo Bay they have an old Mk 3 Ford Cortina, up on bricks, with all the windows wound up and sitting in the sunniest part of the yard, where they threaten to sit those extremists in little nylon mix shorts that have a pocket and a belt.

My Dad was a Ford man, which meant a parade of family Fords all through the 70s, Anglias, and Cortinas, mostly, certainly nothing fancy enough to have nylon or velour seats. Even the fabled heatwave of 77 was endured in a Volkswagen Beetle with basket weave affect plastic seats and the drive to Pontins Southport attempted in temperatures approaching those where NASA considers the viability of habitable life to be unlikely on newly discovered planets. We didn't get fabric seats until about 1983.

Virginia Wade, the Queens Jubilee, Star Wars and a dead Elvis, but what I remember from 1977 is the Ford degree burns from travelling in cars.

The only other time I can remember feeling as hot as this was when I awoke from a disturbing nightmare, where I dreamt I was lying sizzling in a giant frying pan between two huge eggs, only to find I had fallen asleep with my electric blanket on at 3.

The cop hating Geordie in the woods couldn't have picked a better time to go camping. I can hear him now, telling his fellow inmates " I had a lovely time I did, 1 week hiking up in Northumberland, I tell you, if the weather was like this every year, there would be no need to go on the run in Spain"

Lang may yer lum reek.