Summer's here alright.

Today is 43C in the shade and 80% humidity. 'Hazy' is the official description, which means the air is thick with water vapour and visibility is bad. On the DiscomfortMeter scale of one to ten it must be close to ten.

Mind you, compared to the winters in England in my youth this is so much more acceptable. I don't now which was worse, the miserable cold wet November end or the freezing cold February end of winters.

My first job when I left school. Driving there on my motorbike and not being able to open my hands to let go I had to slide them off the end of the handlebars.

Cold, cold rain running down your neck, running off your raincoat so that your trousers, which you had to wear all day, were soaked below the knees. The rain soaked through the raincoat before long too, so your jacket was also damp all day. Not a nice smell in the claustrophobic Piccadilly Line Tube trains with a thousand damp people crammed together either. A great start to the day.

Going to your car in the morning or evening to find it looking like an igloo, covered in frost. Scrape a small hole on the windscreen so you could see out, sort-of, but it would ice over in seconds. The heater took forever to get the tiniest hint of warmth and never enough to clear the windscreen.

Commuting from the country to work in London I still shiver when I remember one morning standing at the bus stop before 7am. The bus didn't arrive - we were told next day that they simply couldn't get up the hill on the icy road. As I waited my navy blue overcoat gradually turned to white as the frost formed on it. I went home and sat huddled in front of the miserable fire all day.

Having a raging toothache one weekend, getting an emergency appointment with the local dentist, on my way there slipping on the ice and cracking an already painful head on the pavement.

I'll take an August day in Dubai any time in preference to that.

But it's different I'm sure for the boys in blue. Here's a group of them off to work this morning, already nearly 38C (100F) and rising rapidly. And the real killer, the humidity. They earn their pittance of a salary don't they...