Hold the front page: it’s hot in Greece. Italy, too. And – if you can believe it – in the south of Spain. Blaring sunshine on the Costa del Sol in the middle of July – will wonders never cease? Reading the newspaper coverage of this sunshine, you could be forgiven for thinking it was unheard of. That the Mediterranean had never sweltered before. That the streets of Athens and beaches of Alicante had never baked in the midday heat. ‘Italy swelters’, ‘Holiday hell’, ‘Unbearable’, scream the headlines, as if a most unusual calamity, unknown in the annals of time, had struck southern Europe.
