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It's a very British Easter holiday heatwave – and nothing's changed
since 1949
19 APRIL 2019 • 5:00PM
We have just got back from the Caribbean (don’t weep
for me), where we were staying in a resort that was made up almost entirely of
Americans.
“Vacationing” Americans are very friendly, effusive
even, not at all like the
ones I have met in, say, New York, who walk quickly with their heads down,
making me feel quite at home. No: these Americans really wanted to chat.
We’d stand behind them in the queue at the
breakfast buffet, minding our own business, and all they wanted to do was talk
to us about a) the royals, and b) how excited we must be to see the sun.
When the first topic was mentioned, my husband
would raise his eyes to the heavens and brace himself in readiness for my spiel
about the time I met Prince Harry.
When it came to the second topic, we would both
raise our eyes skyward, silently wondering why so many people around the globe believe that us Brits
exist on a grey, windswept island, living under rocks, waiting for that bright
yellow orb of fire to appear in the sky for its allotted annual five minutes,
so that we can all indulge our favourite national pastime of worshipping the
sun.
Then we
stepped off the plane at Gatwick to find people in raptures because the mercury
had risen above 10 degrees, and we realised
that the reason we are viewed this way is because this is exactly the way we
are: pale, pasty, very
easily excited by the weather.
So excited
by the weather that I believe this to be the 1,789th column I have written
about it in my career.
Much has been made of this Easter “heatwave”, coming 70 years after the last one, when Britain “boiled” in 29-degree heat. Reading
reports of the 1949 episode, I am comforted by the fact that while much has
changed – social media,
iPhones, 24-hour news – nothing has really changed at all.
Back then, the warmer weather had people heading in
droves to the beaches, just as it does now, despite the water still being so
cold that even jellyfish turn
their tendrils up at it. The sun sent Brits into a feverish state even
then, with the Duke of Marlborough having to temporarily close Blenheim Palace
due to people climbing fences into private areas of the grounds and picking
flowers. Naughty!
Today, the magic combination of warm weather and a
four-day holiday weekend provides a different kind of loutish behaviour, with
young folk consuming their body weight in booze and throwing up on pavements of towns and
cities across the country, their actions helpfully captured by newspaper photographers so that the
rest of us can goggle at their behaviour from the comfort of our moral high
ground.
Returning from a place where people thought us mad
for venturing into the Caribbean Sea when the sun disappeared briefly behind a
cloud (“but the water is so cold!”), I am reminded that a heatwave is all relative, really.
Discussion
points
See if you can label the techniques highlighted in
the text:
·
Anecdote (personal story to
illustrate a point)
·
Triples/Rule of 3
·
Use of humour
·
Use of hyperbole (pronounced hyper
bol ee), meaning exaggeration.
·
Metaphorical language
·
Colloquial (informal/chatty) style
·
Repetition for effect
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