There are 12 types of person in a heatwave and I’m about to tell you which one you are

I’m the iced coffee master wbu x

2 years ago

Izzy Schifano, Frances Gurney, Phoebe Kowhai & Hayley Soen

In case you missed it, it’s HOT. Like, proper hot. Don’t even think about stepping outside without sunnies, two litres of water, and a load of factor 50. The heatwave is well and truly heatwaving right now, and the entire country has gone insane. When the heatwave hits, it’s like everyone loses their minds and becomes an entirely different person.

There’s the one who’ll plan tinnies in the park with military precision, the one who insists on getting every last crumb of sun and staying outside until nightfall, and the one who wants to make a day of it and heads to Brighton, along with every other person in Britain. There’s the person who lives off iced coffee, and on the other end of the scale there’s the person who is convinced hot drinks cool you down in the heat and is essentially just sweating out tea. Even worse, the one who forces you to keep every single curtain shut and will barely even let you open the front door.

This is every single person you will find in a Great British heatwave:

The tinnies in the park organiser

This person acts as though they’re organising a military operation in the group chat. They are brutal when it comes to organising drinks in the sun. When you turn up you’ll see they’ve brought a cool box and a huge bag of ice for everyone to share, plus loads of bags of crisps. They will lather you in sun cream and have no shame in asking you to rub it into their back.

The one obsessed with hot drinks

“DiD yOu KnOw HoT dRiNkS cOoL yOu DoWn On A hOt DaY, ACTUALLY???” they yell in your face whilst downing cups of boiling hot tea left, right and centre. Their sweat is 95 per cent PG Tips but they don’t care because apparently science tells them that this is what they should do.

The iced coffee master

From one extreme to the other, there is always someone who comes into their ELEMENT when the sun is out. This is the person who knows how to make great iced coffees at home, and won’t rest until you know it. It’s just 9am but they’re already straight into the group chat sharing their iced coffee masterpieces. Expect at least three further on in the day. We get it.

The one who’s immediately off to Brighton

Not a crumb of sun cream in sight, they’re making the most of the sunny day by getting an 11am train to Brighton, until they get to the platform and realise that every single other person in the UK has also had this bright idea. The train will be more sweaty than the armpit of a middle aged man on the Central line at rush hour, and when they finally make it to the beach it will only be more heaving.

A quick dip in the sea followed by many, many lukewarm beers, before an even sweatier train home. Ah, the great British summer. Bliss x

The one who’s OTT about the curtains

Your housemate’s up at 5am to open all the windows and let the cool air in. But as soon as it hits 7am, every single window is barred shut and the curtains have been pretty much stapled together. If you even so much as glance towards them and consider opening them a crack, you may as well have said you’re planning on setting the entire house on fire. And don’t even THINK about turning a light on, didn’t you know the bulbs emit heat??

This person will also be the one who swears by a completely bizarre heatwave hack they found online, like sitting inside their duvet cover. Totally normal behaviour x

The sun chaser

As soon as they wake up, they’ve got their shorts and sunnies on and are running to go and lie in the sun. They spend the whole day checking the UV index on their phone and raving about how high it is, sipping on San Pelly tins and eating ice lollies, and staying outside until it’s dark, because God forbid they miss a single millisecond of sun. Their evening will then be spent having an ice cold shower and dousing themself in an entire tub of after sun.

The one who’s still being forced to work

There are two subcategories of this person – the one in the office and the one who’s allowed to work from home. Both are crying the whole day long because they just want to be able to have a break and drink some Pimm’s in the park, is that too much to ask?

The best hack of all time

The person who’s working in the office kicks up a fuss about it and has FOMO from staring at everyone’s Instagram stories, but lowkey is quite smug about it because guess what, their office has air-con. The dream. On the other hand, the person who’s working from home is sweating their tits off, but has figured out that if you put your laptop in a cardboard box it shades the screen enough to let you sit outside, so at least they can catch a tan.

The one who bought a gym membership just for the pool

via Instagram @brown.elle

“Do you want to use my guest pass?” they’ll ask you as they head to the gym for the second time that day. Catch is though, they actually hate the gym and have only forked out the membership fee to be able to use the pool. You’ll see them nowhere else for the whole summer – nothing can come close to the sweet, watery relief of jumping in a pool when the weather is scorching. Bonus points it’s an outdoor pool with sun loungers.

Come September and they’ll cancel their membership as no one’s got time for the gym in winter, only for them to repeat the whole process next summer.

The heatwave denier

There’s always one, and you know who you are. Despite the world literally melting outside our windows, there will always be one person frantically refreshing the weather app and saying we’re all making a big deal over nothing and it’s “like 25 degrees” for one day. HAVE YOU NOT SEEN THE CODE RED WEATHER WARNING?!

The heatwave Instagrammer

We don’t need a picture of your feet in your garden with the temperature over the top, but here we are. This person will sit in the garden with a nice cold Magnum for approximately seven minutes before retreating back inside to sit in front of a fan for the rest of the day. As long as they got a good Insta post out of it, who *actually* cares about the sun, right?

The one who is always naked

There is always that one person who uses the heatwave as an excuse to be naked 24/7. Whether that be in their own house, their garden or sunbathing topless on the beach, at this point they’re practically on the verge of joining a nudist community. As long as they’ve got some sun cream on their nips then it’s all good.

The one who bloody hates summer

Where she wishes she was

“Where’s the rain??” they sob as they sit in their hovel of a room, surrounded by blankets. “It’s too HOT”. They don’t even attempt to embrace the summer months, instead they’d rather sit inside the entire time and just wait it out until Halloween.