As the mercury slumped to 9.6 degrees C in my lounge yesterday morning, metaphorically speaking, I spared a kind thought for the poor Brits basting in their disorientatingly familiar summer heat.

As the Observer reports, hot and dry summers by 2050 will happen every three years on average. Bad news for the country's traditional insects and plants, which are literally running for their lives, the slower tulips and daffodils falling under the bulbs of the faster. Good news for winemakers and, uh, shark-cage operators.

Climate change will affect how we eat, drink, work, holiday and build our homes and offices. 'We're going to have to get used to 30 to 40 days a year with temperatures above 25C,' said Ian Curtis, leader of the Oxfordshire Climate Exchange Project. 'It's going to be weird."

So weird. Siestas have been mooted, even as Spain's cities are dumping them as the concept of manana becomes so, like, yesterday. London's tube temperature hit 47, says the SMH, making some people fan themselves with their sudoku books and wish they were in cooler places, like the Sahara.

On the BBC this week, I heard a woman complaining that you used to be able to put up with the summer when it was just a few weeks, but "now it seems to go on forever".

The horror.

If global warming is all it's cracked up to be, of course, the Gulf Stream may just yet call it a day, and plunge Blighty into the climate it should have: Scandinavia's. Imagine the autumn clothes sales on Oxford St then.