Heat Has England Not So Jolly Tempers Flare As Temperatures Rise, Rain Doesn’t Fall

In usually damp, gray England, where complaining about the weather is a national pastime, the sky is blue, it’s warm, and it hasn’t really rained all summer.

Naturally, everyone is miserable.

The temperature in most of the country has been well into the 80s most days this month, which does not sound stifling except to people whose offices are not always air conditioned and whose homes and cars almost never are. In London, the Underground, which is ventilated but not air-conditioned, provides indisputable evidence during the evening rush hour that antiperspirant makers have not fully exploited the market here.

“You try sitting in a hot cab all day, mate,” one London taxi driver snapped the other day when asked why all his countrymen were so grouchy.

The parks and beaches are packed with sunbathers, normally pale skin turning a luminescent pink despite well-publicized warnings from doctors that sun block is not just for use on holidays in Spain.

Water companies have banned use of hoses in much of the country, a heavy blow to a nation of enthusiastic gardeners. In Wales, reservoirs around Cardiff and Newport are so low that tap water is running green, forcing the local water company to distribute bottled water.

Fearful of a serious drought, some regions have drawn up plans for water rationing. In the city of Bradford, the water company has installed communal standpipes in case it has to cut off residential users.

The heat and drought are killing off crops, pushing prices for fruits and vegetables up sharply. There have been reports of muggers holding up motorists as they sit with convertible tops and windows down.

“We are hot, and we are bothered,” The Independent on Sunday newspaper said in an editorial this week. “The sunshine we craved for so long, now it is here in such abundance, does not fulfill us or relax us; instead, it shortens our tempers and aggravates our tensions.”

In historical terms the British have some cause for complaint. The average daily temperature in central England since June has been 63.3 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the Meteorological Office. That makes this summer the third-hottest since the government began keeping records in 1659, following 1976 at 64.1 degrees and 1826 at 63.7 degrees.

The driest summer since the government began tracking rainfall in 1727 was 1800, when 74 millimeters fell. So far this summer rainfall has totaled 71.8 millimeters, so there is a good chance of a new record.

The public is looking for someone to blame. The regional water companies, whose managers have been collecting better paychecks since the industry was privatized a few years ago, have been one easy target. Alan Smith, the group managing director of Anglian Water, cashed in some stock options the other day, netting him $250,000 in profit and the scorn of overheated, thirsty customers.

“There can be no justification for someone picking up this sum of money at a time when millions of people are not getting the water they pay for,” said Nigel Griffiths, the opposition Labor Party’s spokesman on industry.