Look at these cute ass shorts I bought so I can wear them in the heat and feel less like a sweaty mess and more like a gently perspiring dainty feminine fairy princess
Bitch, it’s hot.
London is in the midst of a heatwave and none of us know what to do or how to function. This happens for a few days a year and we all look at the weather app on our iPhones while we’re at the office and think aww shit now, it’s about to be lit but what we should be thinking is how the incinerated fuck am I supposed to stay alive during a week of 30+ °C heat?. But we don’t think that because we’ve been conditioned to think that heat is excellent; that heat is glorious, which it truly is if you have the luxury of air conditioning which London certainly does not.
I peaced out of my job for the last time last week (more on that another time) which was just in time for the arrival of my wonderful friend who came to visit me for a couple of days before flying off to be glamorous in Ireland. I warned her that London was going to be hot and that she might want to pack accordingly. What I should have told her was to abandon all hope or maybe think about lining the gusset of her underwear with dry ice in order to keep cool.
You’re probably sitting in Arizona or in your weekend cottage on the surface of the sun thinking “this lightweight bitch and her complaining; it ain’t even all that hot,” and that’s where you would be dead ass wrong, friend. It’s hot as wool-wrapped balls and you’re damn right I’m going to complain about it. I feel like I got C here under false pretenses. She flew in Monday night and on Tuesday when we got up, the weather was downright pleasant. The sun was not being an obnoxious asshole and the breeze was sashaying through the trees in a Misty Copeland-like fashion. We felt brave enough to put on makeup without the threat of it sliding down our faces and ending up in our shoes by day’s end. We left the house and went into Central London to shop and eat sweet potato fries because isn’t that what you’re meant to do when you have a friend from America visiting and no job to trap you with deadlines and responsibilities?
We’re goddamn fools.
We started out the day looking cute and put together, wearing fashionable sundresses and shades and carrying our bags as we trotted through the throngs of people to look into stores that were far too cool for us. We ate our sweet potato fries. We even went into Liberty and tried on the sale shoes like we had a spare £370 (down from £695!) to spend on Giuseppe Zanotti shoes that would shred our arches and elicit blisters the size of plums on our heels. We talked a gang of shit as we are wont to do whenever we are together and because C understands my life, and we even got Starbucks where I choked on my mango frap while C tried to order iced coffee from baristas who did not know what Half & Half was.
But all the fun and games were shortlived and I’ll tell you why. The sun by itself is a bad bitch. Living her life, doing what she needs to; blessing us all with that righteous vitamin D. We love the sun. When she’s alone. But then she opens the door to humidity, the trifling ex-boyfriend that refuses to disappear and together, they are a duo of oppression the likes of which cannot be rivalled. It didn’t even fully hit me how uncomfortable I was until I was trying on an ill-advised dress in a store I should know better than to think can contain the girth of my chest. There’s nothing like inadvertently leaving your boob sweat on a sale dress to make you realise you need to take your ass home before you melt.
London cannot deal.
The thing about a heatwave in this city is that our already stretched public transport system is ill-equipped to handle super high temperatures. You’d think that the genius they’re paying millions to maintain this infrastructure would at some point have said hey, you know what would help people packed into overheated metal tubes hurtling below London? Some fucking air con. But naw. Why provide air con on trains when you can just forget to turn the heating off instead meaning that instead if it being 40°C on the train, it is now the equivalent of tap dancing in Satan’s asshole and elderly people are literally risking their lives when they board?
C and I sweated through our clothes on the way home and decided as we wrung out our bras that we wouldn’t even bother heading into Central the following day (yesterday) because, smart.
Did I mention that London is unable to can?
Because we truly are. We don’t have the luxury of central air in our houses. So yesterday when the Mercury hit almost 37°C and Wimbledon was bursting into flames, we had to combat the heat by setting up some miserable ass fans to stir the soup-like air; fans that did fuck all but blow pollen right up my hayfever-inflamed nostrils. C and I went to Tesco for supplies (I in shorts that did very little to preserve my dignity, C in a tiny pink crop top she bought at Primark the day before) and we just lurked in the freezer aisles making eye contact with the sympathetic security guard who said nothing as I pressed a tub of Haagen Dazs to my brow and tucked a bag of frozen peas into my bra. A bra Tesco employees should be fucking grateful I was wearing in the first damn place, because who has time for underwear when Lucifer himself is whispering fiery nothings right into your face?
So in conclusion: LONDON IS MORE INEPT AT DEALING WITH HEAT THAN DONALD TRUMP IS AT DEALING WITH HIS DISHEVELLED WIG.
And we can complain about it because it’s the only activity that doesn’t fucking make us sweat litres into our underwear.
Now I’m going to go and snort crushed hayfever pills in an effort to stop my eyes from burning out of my head and I hope y’all enjoy your day.
