Celsius 232.7778

I live in a 1950s terrace house on the outskirts of Nottingham. The walls are so thick that multiple builders have failed to successfully drill through them. They are filled with concrete and rubble, and even diamond-tipped drill bits fail to pierce them.

So when I say that my house cannot deal with a heatwave, you can take that to the bank.

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I can completely understand why Americans and Australians often laugh at us Brits when we talk about 30-degree (86 f) heat being an "unbearable heatwave". But I have been to both countries, and it really is not the same.

The air conditioning in Sydney airport was so wonderfully cold that I had to put a hoodie on.

Sometimes, when I'm sweating through another night in balmy Britain, I like to pretend that I'm being held up by Australian customs officials for carrying an apple in my pocket, and as they slowly raise their guns towards me, the cool breeze of the air conditioning unit blows the hair back from my forehead.

In Britain, our houses have been designed for centuries to keep the warmth inside. Every single architectural question is answered with "more insulation".

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"But why don't you just get air conditioning?"

I'm 38 years old. To give you some context, when I was born in 1987 there were zero heatwaves in Britain that year.

Not a single day reached 30 degrees. It was cold and wet. And that was the case throughout the whole of the 90s.

Summers were short, rain was frequent, and my family didn't even own a small fan for the first 16 years of my life. It would have been the equivalent of purchasing a thermal blanket in Kuwait.

This year, we've already had four heatwaves, and there's still more to come. The country is suffering from a drought. My grass has turned to kindling, my plants have turned to straw, and my anti-perspirant budget has skyrocketed.

All I've got to protect myself from 40-degree heat is a small fan and a "cooling spray" that my mother-in-law gave us.

Which is about as much use as ... actually, no analogy can come close to how useless a cooling spray is when used inside a fully insulated house in 40-degree weather. At least a rapidly melting chocolate teapot would taste nice.

So why no air conditioning?

Partly because, in Britain, we still can't see ourselves as a warm country. We can see a weather forecast that shows bright yellow suns and no clouds for 12 days and still pack a raincoat.

We've been burned before.

Too many picnics that ended in thunderstorms.

Too many beach trips ruined by hail.

Too many August bank holiday weekends spent indoors, because of course it's going to bloody rain on a bank holiday; it's tradition.

As a society, we know that the moment one of us purchases an air conditioning unit, the weather Gods will punish us for our hubris, and give us 40 days and 40 nights of Biblical vengeance.

But I think that the biggest reason is that we as a society do not like to look like we're following a trend.

There are YouTube videos of French people rushing into shops and fighting each other for air conditioning units - quite understandably, I might add.

And we'll be damned if we're copying the French!

British tradition is that if you really want something in a shop, and there are only a few items left, then you do NOT run. You do a fast little half-walk, and try to reach the inevitable queue before your similarly fast-walking adversary.

If you're the first person in your neighbourhood to have an air conditioning van outside your house, you better believe that you're going to be the topic of conversation for your neighbours for the next 6 weeks.

"Mike at number 32" suddenly becomes "Air Con Mike", and that name will be there until the day he dies. Long after every single person on his street has an air conditioning unit of their own.

You don't even need to have purchased it to get that nickname. They could have just been giving you a quote. The van may have just broken down outside your house. You may not even have been inside your house at the time.

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So what does that mean for me?

It means that I am sitting in the hottest, most humid weather imaginable (to a Brit), with no fan, no air conditioning, and not even a slight breeze to cool me down.

Every task is now impossible. I can't cook, I can't eat, I can't tidy the house, I can't even summon the energy to argue with strangers on the internet.

And there's no rain forecast for another 6 days.

Perhaps I'll just Google "Air conditioning installation Nottingham". Surely the neighbours won't be monitoring my browsing history? Right?

Matt "Air Con" Smith