I love the heat, just as well as I've spent a large percentage of my adult working life in the Middle East, the Far East and Australia.
I cover myself (redhead and freckles) which, in effect, means you carry your own shady place around with you, wear a brimmed hat and sunglasses and otherwise just submit to it. Can't do anything about it, no use fighting it, only gets you hot and bothered.
I went out on my bike this morning for a couple of hours, got back at 11am. It was delightful on the wooded cycle paths around my home. It's now 28deg and feels very humid - it had rained a little overnight, I was surprised to see when I went outside at 9am.
Of course, the heat here is nothing abnormal for large parts of the world which appear to function perfectly well without all the hysteria about 'red warnings' but given that neither our society nor its facilities are built for extremes of temperature - cold or hot - I'm not sure what can be done about people who behave irresponsibly in the heat, or those who try to carry on as normal in it - or those who insist that others carry on as normal. It's not normal for us and shouldn't be treated as such.
In a society such as ours, the frail and vulnerable who simply don't/can't understand how dangerous both heat and cold can be, should be actively protected and I really don't know what can be done there.
I think it was in the heatwave or 2017 when I was on a bus going to a local town. An elderly lady got onto the bus and she was quite clearly not well; she had on a skirt and tights, and thick shoes, a top, a cardigan and over that a jacket and she wore an old-fashioned headscarf too. I bet she had on a vest and bra and knickers too! A young British Asian woman sat opposite to me; we looked at each other, spoke together and were both very concerned about her. I encouraged her to slip her jacket off then the young woman gave her a bottle of water which was still partly frozen, and told her to hold it against her neck, then have a sip of it, while I went up front to have a word with the driver. Fortunately he knew her, she was a regular on the bus and he always watched out for her daughter when he got to her stop. He said he’d have a word with her. Otherwise we had planned to stay on the bus, get off with her and take her somewhere cool and safe, if necessary to hospital in a taxi. We need to have an urgent think about what to do about incidences like that …
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