[nilesfunnies] Fw: Mercury rising

Mercury rising

*Mercury* *rising*

Sean Clarke

/20/ /July/ /2006/

Welcome to the Wrap, Guardian Unlimited's digest of the best of the day's
papers.

*HOTTEST* *JULY* *TEMPERATURE* *EVER* *RECORDED*

Of course the spotlight of the British press falls on Lebanon and Israel,
where the violence continues unabated. And of course it falls elsewhere
- on Poland, where twin brothers have taken the two leading offices of
state; on Whitehall, where the Home Office is under attack from several
fronts; even, in the Independent, on Iraq. But as much as any of this,
today, the spotlight of the British press falls on the hitherto
anonymous town of Charlwood in Surrey. For there, yesterday, the
temperature reached 36.3 degrees Celsius, the hottest July temperature
ever recorded in the United Kingdom.

The Telegraph devotes the top half of its front page (the bit
traditionally reserved for attracting readers with startling news) to an
admittedly very attractive photograph of someone feeling a bit hot and
splashing water on their face. It then, in common with most of its
rivals, devotes most of pages 2 and 3 to further reports of astonishing
incidents, including, but not limited to: child feels a bit hot and
plays with hosepipe; people lucky enough to have the day off feel a bit
hot and go to the beach; soldiers unlucky enough to be on guard duty
feel a bit hot but have to keep their bearskins on.

The Express shows a woman cooking an egg on the bonnet of her car: just
because you can, it doesn't mean that you should. The Times
entertainingly reports that a boy in Sheffield "borrowed a classmate's
skirt" to make a point about uniform rules at his school. The head
teacher said: "We realise it is very hot. If he wants to wear a skirt,
he is welcome." But what of his classmate? Did she sit through double
maths in her smalls?

If she did, she's in good company at the Sun, where a variety of
attractive young women have found that when feeling a bit hot, it's best
to take some clothes off. Happily for all concerned, photographers were
on hand.

Of course, it does all have a serious side. The Guardian's business pages
report on the massive drain on the national grid as fans and air
conditioning struggled while office workers felt a bit hot. The demand
sent power prices to GBP300 per megawatt hour, four times their level on
Monday, Back at the Telegraph, Boris Johnson can't understand why papers
(such as the Telegraph) devote so much space to this stuff when so many
important things are happening in the world. "One warm day and the whole
country flops down in a faint like a bunch of wilted pansies. I mean,
what's got into us, eh?" The Wrap sometimes suspects that his column is
not written by Boris Johnson, but by an Automatic Boris Johnson Parody
Generator. Have we forgotten, asks the ABJPG, that our Empire conquered
the world (even the parts that are a bit hot) while our "French and
German rivals were having a siesta"?

Ever the contrarian, the Independent unearths a picture of Cornwall,
where it was raining.

Enough of this. I'm not even going to tell you about the Telegraph letter
writer who had a lovely day at the seaside with her grandson,
notwithstanding it was a bit hot.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/wrap

Guardian Unlimited copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006.