My heatwave is not your heatwave

Of the many, many how-to-keep-cool tips published over the last month, the most memorable for me was the Telegraph’s advice to “turn off your central heating”. In the Guardian I read avidly about how to “drink water” and “stay in the shade”, and wrote these tips down carefully in my little book. No, no – there were some good ideas in there, too, I’m sure, about car doors and small sips. But as Naomi Klein pointed out in a recent Substack newsletter, the underlying message to all current advice on keeping cool is that “saving yourself and your family is your responsibility, and yours alone”.

I thought about this when I saw, from my seat upstairs on a sauna-like bus, as I fanned myself pathetically with a paperback, a homeless woman sleeping on the pavement. She was right outside Tesco in the rays of the midday sun. Further along the road another man was begging outside the station as commuters hurried past, shaded under umbrellas. A young homeless woman paced in circles near the hospital in a jumper and jacket, carrying a rucksack the size of a child, her dog panting by the wall. People will die this summer, I realised, not because they won’t take tips on how to stay cool, but because they can’t.

There is a whiplash-ish element to living in 2026, as we see wildfires swallow whole sections of Europe and videos of horses galloping from flames, and the heat here, humming, yellow and ominous like bees. There’s the feeling that we are constantly having to adjust to what some insist on calling a “new normal”, despite normality seeming to shift daily. In London, for instance, the mayor has published a new “cool spaces” map, showing “indoor venues open to all where Londoners can take respite on hot days”. I scrolled across it in dark wonder, as if looking at a map of tomorrow. In the centre of town there are museums and galleries; out in the sticks, where I live, the odd library or leisure centre. Which is really useful for families and the sweltering elderly, but perhaps less welcoming for London’s 15,000 stigmatised rough sleepers, unshowered and carrying everything they own.

In the past, emergency action to get rough sleepers off the streets was typically taken around Christmastime, when cold temperatures make it particularly dangerous to live outside. As heatwaves become more common, councils are having to work out when the temperature is so high they need to bring people into temporary accommodation. But there are problems here, too, as (the Big Issue reported) overheating disproportionately affects families in this temporary accommodation, where lots of people may be living together in cramped flats or unsuitable converted office blocks. London Centric spoke to people housed in temporary accommodation in south London who’d had their air conditioning turned off by the landlord while it remained on for private tenants in the same tower block. Residents said the heat, which reached 40 degrees in the affected flats, had sent some children to hospital. Their local Labour councillor, Stuart Neaverson, said: “It’s a tale of two temperatures, with a clear message: if you’re poor, you can sweat.”

My heatwave may not be your heatwave, is what we learn as the months dry out. The weathers we’re experiencing are not the same for everyone. Heat inequality hits now in bleak and violent ways, exposing class, cracks in care, and the (sometimes) lie of community. While some new parents are booking into air-conditioned hotels to help their babies sleep, others are camping in parks or sitting in A&E after their toddlers pass out. Our ability to adapt to the heat depends on our income, and while lists and leaflets about how to keep cool might offer fanning potential on a sweat-spoiled afternoon, they’re of very little use to most people in the city, especially those living in poverty. The growing gap between those who can afford to live through a British summer and those who can’t reveals the politics of heat.