Like much of Britain, Europe, the northern hemisphere etc., I have been paying attention to the weather. It is hard to avoid. Weather gets everywhere.

My room receives very little in the way of ventilation and quite a lot of heat. I succumbed to my environmentally questionable portable AC unit last night, but plan to stick to the fan this evening. The hope is to find a sweet spot where comfort is possible, the cat still feels welcome (he is not a fan of the AC) and I keep my contribution to the destruction of the environment to a minimum.

People deal with their discomforts in different ways. Some become harbingers of doom, shrieking at the top of their lungs that sensible people somehow forget to drink water when it’s very hot, and that this the end of the world as we know it. Others revert to the curmudgeon and sceptic, shouting loudly that “summer is hot” and “why is everyone making such a fuss?”

Me? I find both the sensationalism of the press and doomsayers and the blinkered shortsightedness of the sceptics almost equally annoying. I find my comfort, in part, in working out which of the two annoys me more. I suppose this makes me some manner of centrist with regards to weather chat, which is terribly unfortunate as it’s not a very good time be a centrist in anything. It doesn’t concern me too much, however, because I am becoming far less centrist in almost everything else.

The curmudgeons and sceptics are the most annoying though. This weather isn’t normal. It hasn’t been normal for some time. Nothing is fucking normal, you fucking idiots. The planet is in such a state of flux in every facet of existence that we have to look to either geology or astronomy to find anything that could be described as “normal” or “going to plan”.

It doesn’t make the doomsayers any less annoying, mind. Perhaps that’s why people ignore them and doom keeps happening?

Apart from the busy work of figuring out who bothers me most, I’ve been considering the temperature at which drinking whisky becomes unacceptable. Unthinkable, even. As much as I love it, it’s not a great hot weather tipple. I rarely touch it in Key West. Whisky warms from the inside. When it’s too warm outside, or inside, you can feel your skin getting flush and the beads of sweat rising to your temples after a sip or two. And because much of the point of whisky is its warmth, it is as though you’re drinking some kind of distillation of the discomforting climate around you. It just isn’t right.

There’s something about the combination of whisky and heat that brings to mind early/mid twentieth century British ex-pats propping up bars in hot places, rigidly dressing as though they were still in Blighty, slow ceiling fans giving no relief to relentless swelter, sweating through their collared shirts into their suit jackets, their faces sunburnt and ruddy all at once. Sweat stings their bloodshot eyes as they drink warm whisky and soda and refuse ice because “that’s for Americans”.

Drinking whisky when it’s too hot out feels like an exercise in denying reality. The act of throwing in a few ice cubes in it is sort of like watching your favourite movie in the back of an old 747 on a bumpy flight. It’s the same but less fun. So I resign myself to taking a wee break from my favourite tipple for a few days, possibly longer. As sacrifices go, you’d struggle to find a smaller one. Perhaps neck and neck with eschewing the AC for the less effective fan to cool my sauna of a room.

That British ex-pat in my mind’s eye, possibly the character from a Graham Greene novel, the one suffering the shitty ceiling fan and refusing ice for his Red Label or Black & White and soda, drenched in sweat, pink from the sun and red from the drink, I could see him in the pub today, kind of. Grumbling that it’s just summer. It’s just hot. It’s not a big deal. Why is everyone making such a fuss.

The older I get the more I realise that people openly wondering what all the fuss is about are not to be trusted. They hate fuss because it disturbs the mountain of privilege they sit upon. As someone prone to reclining on the odd hillock of privilege, I understand the desire, but sadly it operates on the presumption that everything was fine in the first place. And that’s just nonsense. Everything wasn’t fine in the first place. And everything certainly isn’t fine now. For fuck’s sake, it’s almost too hot drink whisky.