Five very British responses to the sun coming out (at last)

You must have heard the rumours. You must have felt the tremors in the atmosphere as word has spread, evolving first from desperate hope to improbable pub chat, before subtly influencing future plans and, finally, reaching a stage known these days as “Schafernaker-official”. Here comes the sun. And to appropriate George Harrison: little darlin’, it feels like absolute bloody ages since it’s been here.

Truly, the outlook is that pleasant. Sheath the umbrella you’ve held closer than your firstborn since last September and unpeel those long johns – better late than never (it is midsummer on June 20), the symbol attached to the weather forecast for most areas of the country next week shows a sun, next to a temperature in the low to mid 20s.

That was the winter of our discontent – one so long and gruelling it made Game of Thrones feel like it took place in Magaluf – now is the summer of discount tents, as Glastonbury and queuing for Wimbledon suddenly seem appealing again.

And we can expect meteorologists to respond predictably, in saying that conditions were always going to improve at some point, we just needed to be patient and not so pathetic and melodramatic. But nobody will hear them, because the rest of the nation will also respond predictably: by acting as if a 72-hour period of mild warmth could just be the last sunshine we ever see on Earth.

Like mayflies desperately trying to fit a rich, varied life into only a couple of days, Britons are about to binge-summer, hurling themselves into sunshine mode all at once. Here’s what to look out for next week – a period of time history we’ll come to know, fondly, as “the Summer of 2024”. It’s due to rain again shortly afterwards.

Everybody will be half-naked

“The people who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts,” Boris Johnson famously said in his first speech as prime minister. He was talking about restoring trust in our democracy – that went well – but a more accurate version of that line would have been longer: “The people who bet against Britons losing their shirts are going to lose their shirts.”

Next week, expect the streets of this country to look like 3pm at a Newcastle United home game. Sun’s out, guns out, guts out. In Britain, when the mercury nuzzles over the 18C mark, men have an inalienable right to wander around any and all public spaces wearing nothing on their top halves aside from an optional layer of back hair. It’s a line I’ve not searched Reform UK’s “contract” for, but I’m sure it’s there.

The newspaper front pages will feature young women in bikinis on the beach in Bournemouth, under the headline caption “Hey June… at last”. King Charles will wear those great sunglasses he always puts with a linen suit. And we will all experience an existential wardrobe crisis, having not thought to buy any summer clothes this year at all. Briefly, you will consider simply tearing off all the sleeves and bottoms from your winter outfits. The only thing preventing you is the surefire guarantee you’ll need those fleeces again in about three weeks’ time.

You know, it’s warmer than…

Cape Town? Canberra? Cairo? The tabloids are ready, poised to scan the global temperature charts and furnish your local pub bore with the ammunition needed to start a conversation with: “You know, I was reading that it’s hotter in Bracknell than it is in Bologna this week. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

It makes you think what, Neville? That people who are holidaying in Bologna, sampling the fresh produce and sipping sangiovese in the piazza should be jealous of those lunching at The Lexicon, “Berkshire’s leading shopping destination”? Get a hold of yourself.

Our diets will change – overnight

“Err, darling, why are there nine litres of gazpacho in the fridge?” you will ask your spouse, while counting the packets of miscellaneous defrosting meats, cases of rosé, and Costco forklift pallet containing several thousand choc ices. “It’s summer! I panicked on the order!” comes the reply. At that point you notice a new interior wall in the kitchen, built entirely from bags of charcoal, poised for the BBQ.

Whatever you dine on – for the super-rich, who can afford olive oil in this economy, that means light, blue-zoney Mediterranean fare; for the rest of us, sausages so charred they make Pompeii look underdone – one thing will unite all our meals: they’ll be al fresco.

“Have you got a table outside?” will briefly become a national catchphrase. Pubs will relocate to the urine-soaked alleyways next to the front door. Lunches will become picnics, with a game of rounders attached. And in workplaces across the land, tea rounds are on pause as the interns are sent out for round after round of frappés.

“Fresh ice cream to celebrate the start of the summer,” read a hastily-prepared internal poster in the loos at the Telegraph offices this week. The event is scheduled for tomorrow from 2-4pm. This timing presumably refers to the window of opportunity to procure a frozen snack, rather than the anticipated length of the summer, but who really knows.

We will all go to the beach – the same beach

Nothing says, “it is a little bit sunny” in Britain like sitting in a three-mile queue on the motorway, the air conditioning wheezing, the children crying, the M&S buffet melting, the bucket and spade looking increasingly appealing as a means of digging your way out, the clock ticking towards autumn, as you and the rest of your county simultaneously regret having the same idea of travelling to the nearest beach for the day.

“But I don’t understand, it was listed on ‘Eight top secret beaches that everybody should know about’ in the travel section the other day? It said it was ‘a charmingly unspoiled hidden gem!’” you rage at the steering wheel, before looking across at the car in the next lane, where the driver is saying, word for word, the exact same sentence.

You will panic about the garden

Gardeners, enjoy the first few hours of this weather, because there’s only a limited amount of time before you start fretting about a hosepipe ban being introduced. All winter you’ve shaken your fists at the ground frosts and your drowned seedlings, now it’s just too sunny.

“The grass is ruined, the beds are dying, this has to stop… My lawn, my poor lawn…” come the cries from these meteorological Goldilockses. It’s all grist to the green-fingered mill, however, for a condition of being a gardener is lamenting that it is impossible for conditions to be ideal, if only to have something to talk about.

Monty Don never appears on Gardeners’ World  in his soft chore jackets, golden retriever at his heel, and says simply, “You’ve no excuses this week, folks, the weather is absolutely perfect. If your garden’s rubbish, frankly that’s on you.” To tut at the skies is to be a gardener. That does not stop now.