Here are all the things summer has ruined because it's too damn hot

I’m not one to saunter around town stating the obvious, but if you’ll just forgive me for a fleeting moment: it’s quite hot at the moment isn’t it? It’s the opposite of cold – it is sweaty, humid, sweltering and it is, on average, ruining 85% of my fun. A large, significant divot of What I Like is being mercilessly severed by the overbearing and relentless heat from above. The sun is a selfish entity that pays no mind to me and my interests, it spits in the face of my enjoyment.

Of course, I also love the sun, and it makes many things much better, namely: drinking. But it also renders a great number of things immediately impossible – these are those things:

Sleeping

If you’ll excuse me for being blatant again, let’s get this one out of the way first. Ever wanted to experience what a worm feels like thrashing about on the flat griddle of a burger truck? Well, now you can! And all you’ve got to do is go to bed! Toss and turn for eight hours straight! Feel the sheets peel off your skin like a plaster off a seal’s back! Vape the dank atmosphere of your bedroom like a Hoover sucking up porridge! Desperately spin your pillow around to discover the other side is somehow twice as hot! Enjoy a truck-dump of salt deposited at the corners of your eyes that you would cry away if your tears didn’t immediately evaporate! Get up it’s time for work!

Exercising

I mean, it’s difficult to do this anyway, but doing it when it’s this hot is an absolute punk’s game. You know how you sweat just anyway when it’s hot? Why would you want to add to it by running, or lifting weights, or if you’re a complete barnacle; going on a rowing machine? Don’t do it, for the sake of your back sweat. Especially at the gym. Yes, it may be air conditioned, but every other boiling egg in the joint is leaking fluid all over the shop, so you’ve got their moist discharge to slide around in, too.

Of course, swimming is OK. Still gross, when you think about it, but at least it’s not hot gross.

Owning a leather sofa

Oooh that’s a swanky piece of furniture in your living room, what a talking point, looks really comfy, wow it reclines, wipes clean too I bet. All things people say about your nice new black leather sofa, standing medium-height, pride of place in your “posh room”. But, erm, you made a mistake didn’t you? You went and got a leather one, and now it’s the summer, and you’ve actually got a giant lump of hot glue in your house.

Imagine laying your bare arm onto a slab of steaming molten asphalt, fresh from the paving machine, and you’ve got a hint of what it’s like to sit on your neato, stylish couch. Also, once you lay down on it, you can’t answer the door until at least mid-September or you’ll tear your entire back off.

Going on a date

Drinking anything thicker than a Coors Light

If you want an alcoholic drink to cool you down in this heat (which you do, don’t you?), then it has to be the one that tastes the most like lemonade, really. And the beer that tastes most like lemonade is Coors Light. It is almost not-beer. It is so cool, refreshing and not offensive in any way that it is the only solution to your woes. Anything thicker is a no-go, I’m afraid, buddy – no IPAs, no Worthington’s, no craft beer of any kind, and certainly not any Guinness, lest you want your veins to turn into sewage pipes, filling up like a worm on the end of a bike pump. Stick with Coors, or Bud Light, or preferably a shandy. Yes, a shandy. Every time.

Demonstrating correct posture in the office

We’re told to sit upright at our desks when at work – it’s good for our backs, helps prevent joint problems and irreversible posture damage, and supposedly, it even burns more calories than sitting like an ape. But, haha, yeah, good one, I am the opposite of upright when it’s like this. I’m as far under the desk as possible, my head and arms the only parts of me that are visible, my chin resting on the surface in front of my keyboard.

The downside is that my bones are so hot, that they bend to accommodate my atrocious position, and if anyone accidentally turns on the air-con then I’m permanently stuck in that position, cos… science? Great if you’re taking part in a limbo competition, bad if you’re trying to get on a bus.

Watching an entire movie

Most movies used to be an hour and a half, but now most movies are two hours. It’s like how humans keep getting taller – soon we’ll all be 30 foot tall and all movies will be a year long. But that’s by-the-by, because in this godforsaken heat, even 90 minutes is too long to concentrate on anything – there is no way I can sit there for that long without having a small breakdown.

Basically, films in the summer are to be watched in two, sometimes three sessions, unless you are in a fully air-conditioned cinema. But even then it’s a risk just stepping foot in one because you never know if it’s going to be a wonderful ice-box or a sizzling kiln. Best just to leave films until September.

Eating soup

Soup is the dumbest thing to eat when it’s hot you jerk.*

Putting your seat-belt on

Getting in a car is bad enough when the sun has got his obnoxious hat on (one of those multicoloured ones with a fan on top probably), so you don’t need any added things to worry about. Unfortunately, when you’re in a car, you’re supposed to put your seat-belt on because it’s the safe and just thing to do. Shame then, that the fabric used to make a seat belt absorbs heat with more gusto than you’ve ever encountered in your life. And if you somehow manage to withstand the flesh-searing surface of that and reach the metal at the end, well, might as well introduce everyone else in the car park to your skeleton because your flesh is dusting it’s way out of the sun-roof quicker than you can say “Christ this Mondeo is hot”.

Having sex

This thing you always have time for.

“Oh god, my flight is in five minutes! Gonna have to make it a quick one.”

“Watch out! There’s a train coming! Gonna have to make it a quick one.”

“He’s flatlining! He’s gonna have to make it a quick one.”

However, when the temperature is at a level favoured by lizards and cacti, it’s the last thing you want to do.

Banging your knee on anything

Be extra careful where you’re walking if your thermometer burst before you left the house, because if you become even the slightest bit loose with your leg movements and clang your kneecap onto the corner of a brick wall, then it’s lights out, sunshine. Clonking your knee is sickening at the best of times, but doing it when it’s hot will throw your stomach into your gullet. It also affects your throat, your heart and probably something else painful like your gallbladder, too.

You can’t wear knee-pads either, because the straps get too sweaty, which is really annoying because they look tight as hell, big boy.

Lackadaisically using your laptop

The two ways I like to use my laptop the most, is 1) sit in the living room with it on my lap; and 2) lie on my bed with it on my chest. Problem now is: it heats up my nether regions to boiling point so that all my future tadpole children float to the surface like baby frog ghosts. Or: it radiates my sternum to a level significant enough that it feels like a fiery demon is clasping its flaming fingers around my heart and squeezing it until it stops.

Acting casual

Want people to feel at ease around you? Gutted, pal, there is absolutely no sodding way on earth that you’re going to be able to disguise your jittering, unstable state of existing, burning under the orange fury of our sun god – you’re the epitome of “on edge”, and everyone else is now also that, by proxy. Your eyes dart back and forwards, constantly looking for the nearest spot of shade; your fingers continually flit about your person, adjusting various items of cloth from various folds of skin; and your tongue, your big fat tongue hangs out of your crusty gob like a leech crawling out of a dead otter’s eye socket. You are Captain Conspicuous, the world’s stinkiest and most nervous superhero.

*Actually, a jacket potato is probably way worse.

(Images: iStock)