What hot to wear

It’s hot. You can smell the baking dust even first thing in the morning. But that’s not the only indicator of temperature. I, for instance, am not wearing a tie. I know, I know, amazing. Quite liberating really, but it does make you discover what a tie is actually for - it’s a civilizing influence. Without a tie I feel, and no doubt look, thuggish in the extreme, like James Bond just before everything gets bloody.

There are other indicators. Last year’s linen has been looked out of a lot of cupboards by the look of things. Men are looking awkward in suit trousers but no jacket, you can see them thinking ‘It’s currently Saharan, but will it piss down later’. Shorts are in evidence. Men are just awkward, women appear to go one of two ways, either floaty cotton dresses like something from a flake ad, or something skimpy. Such as the woman who sat opposite me on the train this morning and spent a fair bit of the journey trying to pull her hem line down and the rest of her dress up. It’s going to go one way or the other love, not both.

The readiness is all. I had spoken to my tailor about combating heat and, after soundly cuffing him when he suggested the best way to stay comfortable would be to lose three stone, passed up on the Fremen stillsuit, passed up on the Hinchley and Wardle water-cooled suit with integrated pith helmet and moisture repellent nethergarments and have instead decided simply to sweat like a bastard. It’s natural and it means nobody sits next to you on the train. And if you squelch when you walk, so what?