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Life

19th Jun 2017

How to survive an Irish heatwave

Here is your six-part guide...

Aaron Gillies

IT IS HOT.

Have you noticed that it is hot? It is either global warming or the EU are using wind turbines to redirect their warmth at us as revenge.

Us Irish people aren’t used to the heat, tower fans from Argos are now more valuable than gold, ice cream vans stalk the population at night, you don’t really like fruity cider but you are going to drink so much of it it’s stock price will go up from you alone.

Follow these steps, and you will get through this.

Complain

How is anyone going to know your displeasure at the current temperature if you are not voicing it at every single second? Tell your co-workers, tell your family, tell strangers you meet in the street. Start every conversation with ‘It’s a bit hot, isn’t it?’ because this information may come as a surprise to the other human. What can start as simple muttering under your breath in disdain can quickly, over the course of next

What can start as simple muttering under your breath in disdain can quickly advance into just screaming the word ‘fuck’ into the skies. So you’ll need to stay hydrated, which leads us to the next step.

Don’t drink any water

You may be cool but are you ‘fainting at a bus stop because the only fluids to pass your lips in the last eight hours was a coffee and 17 beers’ cool? As

As Irish people, we have a certain amount of resolve but are mostly just really stubborn, and we would rather admit to liking the music of Mumford And Sons before not starting our day with a cup of tea. Even though the tea is now cool in comparison to the clammy hellscape we now live in. Drink coffee and tea until

Drink coffee and tea until 5pm and then go down the pub and drink exactly one alcoholic drink, which at this point renders you a drunken menace as your body resembles a dried up Tayto crisp.

Complain some more

There is always room to complain a bit more. It’s a national pastime and as such we have a responsibility to complain some more. Take to social media and scream into the void about how your skin now feels like you have been covered in Vaseline and jam, be sure to do this quickly as your phone will be more than likely melting like a cake underwater.

Deodorant is only a problem for other people

Personal hygiene is objective, so when other people say ‘what’s that smell?’, it’s almost definitely not you. Whilst some may find it polite or kind to dowse yourself in a cloud of fancy smelling fog, it is your right to go around the place smelling like someone took a hunk of beef, rolled it in barber shop hair, covered it in baba ganoush and left it behind a radiator for six months. Your sex appeal will skyrocket as you go around your business with a scent that makes dumpsters smell like potpourri.

Flock to any space that is green

Tired of being uncomfortably hot inside? Then go outside and be uncomfortably hot with other people who are uncomfortably hot and lay in a public space whilst constantly being afraid you are about to get mugged by a human or seagull. You can either lay in a public park – where the dangers include bee attacks and people asking for Rizzla – or on the beach, where the main dangers are getting sand in parts of you that doctors didn’t know you

You can either lay in a public park – where the dangers include bee attacks – or on the beach, where the main dangers are getting sand in parts of you that doctors didn’t know you had, and whale attacks. Don’t forget the golden rule of going out in the sun: no day of feeling like the inside of a steak bake is complete without receiving a frisbee directly to the head.

Accept your fate and melt like a mannequin in a microwave

The first stage of many forms of recovery is acceptance. You are no longer human, you are something that lives in what feels like a sleeping bag filled with hot cream. The good news is that we have done this before and we will do it again. There will be a hosepipe ban, someone you know will fall asleep in the sun and return looking like

There will be a hosepipe ban, someone you know will fall asleep in the sun and return looking like radioactive carrot, at some point everyone will start panic buying Magnums and they will be sold on the black market; we have endured this before and we can endure it again.

LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge

Topics:

Weather