Secret to surviving the UK’s COVID-19 summer as lockdown eases in London
Shirts off at 9am, bikinis in the parks, and packed beaches amid a genuine heatwave – welcome to summer 2020 in the United Kingdom.
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There’s shirts off at 9am, bikinis in the parks, and packed beaches amid a genuine heatwave in the UK.
The English have actually not been whingeing Poms this week, it’s been hot. So hot, records have broken. There were six consecutive days of more than 34 degrees for the first time since 1961.
In a country where air conditioners are scarce, it has been uncomfortable.
The nights have been sticky, often more than 20 degrees, and did I mention there’s no airconditioning.
The lockdown has eased in London, but most people are still working from home despite Boris Johnson’s pleas to get them back into the office.
This week, people were starting to crack and they wanted to go back into work, not for the commute, or the conversations with workmates, but the airconditioning.
But there has been salvation. My local pool has reopened and I managed to get a swim for the first time in five months. The pool has been opened for lap swimmers but kids are still banned because there is no chance of getting them to social distance.
After 30 minutes on the phone to get a code for the new booking app, I ambitiously picked the fast lane but there was no petrol in the tank on the first few laps. It felt like the first session of pre-season footy training.
However, in the UK, the standard of swimming is not what you get in the pools in Sydney or Melbourne, where lap swimmers can sometimes be confused with Kieren Perkins or Ian Thorpe.
The word fast, when it comes to pool lane, is fairly subjective.
The shirts off trend is quite extreme though. I saw a bloke near a children’s playground with his shirt off at 11am on a Sunday. In Australia, you would call the police, but it was tolerated here.
Speaking with friends and relatives in Australia, it feels like the world has turned upside down. They are stuck inside in the cold under strict lockdown, while I’m sweating through Australian-style summer heat.
The UK Eat Out to Help Out campaign is another odd contrast; trying to get people to lose weight, tick, but then offering half price chips.
The half-price meals have been working, cafes have been full early in the week when the discounts have been in place.
And the cafes, pubs and restaurants need all the help they can get after the UK announced a 20.7 per cent plunge in the economy – the worst in Europe – pushing it officially into recession.
More than 750,000 jobs have been lost, and the furlough scheme, similar to Australia’s JobKeeper, expires in October.
That’s when the downturn will become an economic tsunami.
The shops have already started to stock Christmas decorations, but many people won’t be able to afford them this year unless a vaccine, most likely produced by Oxford University, can be fast tracked.
But for now, I’m enjoying the summer while it lasts.
Originally published as Secret to surviving the UK’s COVID-19 summer as lockdown eases in London