It seems a bit of a paradox to be sitting in Bangkok and reading about how hot it is in London. But this was the case last week when for the first time Britain experienced temperatures exceeding 40C. Heathrow Airport was the first to clock that magic number. Last time I was at Heathrow it was more like 4C.
As the British normally get excited when the temperature approaches 25C, these latest figures were a bit too much to take. In the UK warm weather is traditionally something to celebrate but not this time. It was too hot to do anything as citizens struggled to come to terms with London being warmer than the Caribbean or Western Sahara.
On Tuesday virtually every British newspaper carried the same front-page photograph of a Queen's Guard, wearing a traditional bear-skin hat on duty outside Buckingham Palace, being given a sip of water by a policeman. The Daily Star headlined it, "And you thought YOU were having a tough day".
