That's what the headline said.
Of course, reading on in the article, I found this: "South-east England is enjoying Britain’s hottest day of the year, as a late summer heatwave raised temperatures to more than 34C." So the UK is really the South East. Obviously the North West Is another country.
Having said that, I have to admit that it was already 18 degrees when I went out for a run at 8 this morning. And, despite the protests of a friend of mine that it was still fairly chilly in Chorlton, we have had a very pleasant, very warm day in Delph and Ashton. My daughter and I took the tiny person on her first bus ride and walked back to their house in our shorts and sleeveless tops, feeling positively summery!
On my way home, it was decidedly muggy and threatening. By seven we were in gloomy darkness and there was an amazing electric storm going on, so fierce and so close overhead that we disconnected the computer and various other electrical gadgets, just in case. I don't think I have seen such a spectacular storm since we were in San Sebastián, at least ten years ago.
We sat in a restaurant which had rain water running through it, watching places just a little lower bailing out their premises. We were also sending text messages to friends in the south of France, just across the bay, who were seeing the same storm from the other side!
The storm seems to have moved on now but I have seen some splendid photos of flooded streets in Manchester. They say the hot weather will continue, although for which parts of the country remains unclear, until the weekend when it will all cool down again.
Just about everywhere I go I take my iPhone with me. And to a great many places I also take my iPad. I log on at the homes of friends and family. I log on in various cafes around the area. Not quite as many as around Vigo but still quite a lot. And yet, compared to some folk I know, I am quite restrained.
Then the other day I listened to a programme about the continual online snooping that enmeshes our life at present: "The Online Identity Crisis" on BBC Radio 4. Basically any information or opinion you put on your computer and send out into the ether in one form or another will be stored somewhere and can be used against you in the future. Well, we knew that already, did we not? But the extent to which this permeates our life is worrying.
Perhaps the most disturbing thing was the fact that the programme makers received an almost identical rejection to their invitation to send a spokesperson to the programme from Facebook, Twitter and Google. It went along the lines that their company thanked them for the invitation but was not going to "reach out at this time". The wording was so close in each case that it could well have been written by an artificial intelligence of some kind, an algorithm perhaps.
Send no more emails, write no blogs, post nothing on Facebook: Big Brother is watching you!!!
But my plan is to proceed as usual but to say nothing too indiscreet.
Here's another thing: make-up. From time to time there are challenges for people, in other words women, to post photos of their "naked" face, the face they wake up to in the morning before they put on their make up. I read about someone who protested when she bought her new phone and discovered that it came automatically with an app to "touch up" any selfies, so that the user always looked her "best". With difficulty she managed to disable it. But apparently we should be using almost professional make up all the time.
In Sunday's newspaper I came across a feature on advice on how to use "colour correctors" ("Pale green to correct redness, orange to balance greenish shadows, and peach to cover bruisy blues, all followed by your foundation.") correctly, so that you don't go out looking like a clown. The answer, apparently, is carefully.
I am clearly living my life all wrong, going out without ensuring I have been on a beauty therapy course first! And, of course, living at the wrong end of the country for the weather forecasters to even truly recognise my existence.
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