Hot Monday

Hasn't this been a balmy Monday? If you live in my little quarter of England, you'll know what I mean.
By Muhammed! I DO love the heat! It gets to my core, warms my bones and my joints move freely; my skin reacts only positively to the Sun's agency (when I burn, I know I'm alive). I really ought to be living in Mallorca or Malaga, with all those ex-pat Brits with lapsed pension contributions and negative equity; or the Canaries; or decamp to one of those cruise-liners, such as The World, that follow our star around this planet (I realise this is scientific inaccuracy, but everything is relative!), satisfying their passengers' every need, with only a minimal risk of endemic disease.
Pending our lottery win, however, in a few weeks we're off to Turkey. Neither Dr Sam nor I have been there before, but we've heard only good reports, Midnight Express and some Kurdish disabuse notwithstanding.
I went to Washington DC one late summer and it was fucking hot in a humid kind of way. But I guess the best experience of heat and its beneficence was a couple of trips to the Red Sea on vacation during successive summers a few years ago: 40ºC? Bring it on! We came back, however, to a Heathrow Airport at over 100 Fahrenheit, the hottest day in Britain's history apparently since it fell away from Pangaea, which somehow deflated our buoyant sense of accomplishment.
One might select today one's summer holiday from a broad church of packages premised on sightseeing, hedonism, watersports, camping, etc., but every couple of years we decide on the necessity of a relaxing beach holiday, where we can offer our bodies to Helios and damn the consequences. The most a la mode scare stories since AIDS are to do with skin cancers (sorry if that's glibly offensive to some), yet I'm of an age group that can remember a specific kind of Ambre Solaire sun lotion, which was probably a simple admixture of olive oil and lemon juice, with no pretensions to 'protection'. We lay on the beach or swam there or frisbee'd there or beach-bouled there, without an inkling of the risks involved from overexposure to our planetary system's energy source. We lay there on our bunks at night, hot, sleepless, dehydrated and on the verge of heat exhaustion, but we LOVED it. Between us (κοσμος or maybe γαια), we have lost the ozone layer and with it our cocooned existence, yet we were always aware of the unforgiving nature of relentless sunshine.
I dream of the bleached, rocky shore of the Mediterranean, the turquoise, the aroma of the pinaceae, the fruit vendors on the beaches, the sense of bounty that, yes, is purchased and is material, yet is humble and which should be available to all. Indeed, who knows, were I doomed to roam this green and pleasant England two centuries hence, after climate change and sea-level rises have done their worst, might I be able to walk among olive groves and fruitful vineyards, where watermelons embiggen on a daily basis and figs ripen on their boughs, where every kind of malaria-vending creature might lurk?
But damn the risks... give me the heat!