IT finally arrived – the weather we have spent almost a year pining for. There was months and months of moaning about continuous rain, howling wind and bitingly cold weather.

And then what do we all do? We start whingeing about high temperatures, ‘relentless heat’, burnt skin and an inability to sleep at night.

Garages faced an influx of motorists wanting repairs to car aircon systems which they had just discovered didn’t work, perhaps because they were switched off for 340 days of the year.

Hospitals found themselves having to deal with hordes of extra people needing treatment. Some were elderly or otherwise ill and genuinely affected by the heat. But many others had simply fallen over or had other mishaps because while they followed medical advice to ‘drink more fluids in hot weather’, they didn’t realise that this meant non-alcoholic drinks!

In residential streets the air was rich with fumes as people rejoiced in watching smoke pour from lumps of burning red meat in the form of everything from sausages to steaks – all within a few feet of kitchens filled with the most modern, clean and efficient cooking aids.

Meanwhile pets lay about panting because they had no water, some were locked in cars, and we continued chucking cigarette ends out of the car window oblivious to the possibility of starting moorland fires.

Because so many of us are used to foreign holidays, we do seem to know how to dress in hot weather. However, surely supermarkets and public transport operators should ban overweight males who are stripped to the waist.

And please let’s not complain about the odd insect or two that appears when the sun is shining.

We just don’t have any problem at all with insects compared with parts of the world where hot weather (and humid rather than the bone-dry heat we’ve been enjoying) is the norm for much of the year.

Cockroaches, venomous spiders, enormous swarms of flies and real mosquitos (as opposed to little midges) – those are proper insects.

Mind you, many more people these days have experienced them.. They are the folk who pay big money to go on holiday to tropical spots in the Caribbean and south east Asia, video the native creatures at their resort complexes and demand money back for their ‘holidays from hell.’ Anyway, at the time of writing it seems we’ve no need to worry for much longer because summer’s about to descend into a wet and windy autumn!