by The former monarch offers his own historical perspective on modern British complaints about summer temperatures
Sit ye down, sit ye down, I shall not be long, for I am told this venue’s air conditioning has been “temporarily out of service” for reasons the promoter described only as “complicated,” a phrase I have learned across five centuries generally means someone simply forgot to pay a bill.
I read this week, in a genuinely reliable meteorological bulletin, that much of southern and central England is enduring a proper heatwave, temperatures likely peaking around thirty-six degrees on Thursday, with the Met Office’s own Deputy Chief Forecaster describing conditions in language I found genuinely moving in its restrained British understatement. Thirty-six degrees. Friends, I have personally sweated through considerably worse while wearing full ceremonial velvet, an ermine collar, and enough gold chain to anchor a small ship, and I did not once complain about it to a national broadcasting corporation.
On The Matter Of Complaining About Heat While Doing Nothing About It
I am told the modern Briton’s primary response to a heatwave is to purchase a small electric fan, place it directly in front of themselves, and then express genuine astonishment that the fan is simply moving hot air around rather than producing any actual cold air from nowhere. Friends, I once commissioned an entire cooling system for Hampton Court involving considerable quantities of ice imported at genuine expense from considerably colder regions, and even I understood, on some basic physical level, that a fan alone was never going to solve this particular problem.
A Word On The Approaching Cooler Weekend
I am further told relief arrives Saturday, as cooler air spreads south from the northwest, a meteorological mercy I compare directly to the relief my own courtiers must have felt whenever I finally calmed down about something, usually a wife, occasionally a foreign ambassador who had said something mildly insulting about my legs.
The Closer
I shall leave you with this. This nation has survived plague, war, and considerably worse monarchs than even myself, and I am confident it shall survive one Thursday of thirty-six degrees, provided everyone stops standing directly in front of a fan expecting miracles and simply accepts that summer, like a difficult king, eventually passes. Thank you, and mind the heat exhaustion, for I am told from personal historical experience that a monarch collapsing in full velvet during a heatwave makes for genuinely excellent gossip but rather poor governance.
An Encore Nobody Asked For
One more thing, before I am mercifully cut off, as I understand is customary once a comedian has overstayed his welcome, a fate I am assured is less permanent than my own experience at Tower Hill, though I am told it feels similarly final to the performer in the actual moment. I have been thinking further, in the green room, surrounded by crisps and a fan that appears to be the only functioning cooling apparatus in this entire building, about heat specifically.
It occurs to me that the modern Briton’s relationship with a heatwave is not unlike my own relationship with difficult news generally, considerable initial denial, followed by dramatic overreaction, followed eventually by a kind of exhausted acceptance that this, too, shall pass, usually right around the time everyone’s actually run out of energy to keep complaining about it properly. I achieved this exact emotional arc roughly six times across my adult life, admittedly regarding wives rather than weather, but the underlying psychological mechanism, I promise you, is genuinely identical.
Let me leave you with this, and then truly I must go, for the promoter has begun that specific throat-cutting gesture I’ve come to recognise across several venues now. Every heatwave, like every difficult reign, eventually breaks. Mine took considerably longer and involved considerably more executions than this Thursday’s forecast suggests will be necessary. Good night, stay hydrated, and if you do own a functioning fan, for the love of all that is holy, please point it at an actual open window.
