Considering air con? That’s how much the UK’s climate has changed already

My kids are growing up in an England where sweltering conditions are no longer freakish - no wonder they think pumping in cold air is reasonable

I don't think I had a single conversation about air conditioning until 2005, when a burst of August weather that we would now consider a respite felt like the mouth of hell.

Sitting in a pub living some Smiths lyrics (gasping, dying, but somehow still alive), a lugubrious friend who took delight only from grim irony said: If this carries on - which it will, because it's not a freak event - everyone will want air conditioning, which will only make climate change worse." I said: Don't be ridiculous; this is freak weather, not British weather. Nobody will want air conditioning, because it's an Americanism, culturally anathema, like Halloween." Fifteen years later, air con is all anyone talks about. I may also have been wrong about Halloween.