The Daily Telegraph Wednesday 24 July 2019 ** 11
‘Give names
to heatwaves
so public will
treat them
seriously’
By Sarah Knapton
Science editor
HEATWAVES should be
named in the same way as
storms to encourage the
public to treat them more
seriously, the London School
of Economics has suggested,
as Britain remained on track
to experience record-break-
ing temperatures this week.
The country could see its
hottest day since records
began tomorrow with the
mercury forecast to soar past
100F (38C).
The Met Office also
warned that night-time
readings may surpass the re-
cord of 75F (23.9C), set in
Brighton on Aug 3 1990,
making sleeping difficult.
Already, rising tempera-
tures have prompted school
closures, while the Environ-
ment Agency has deployed
drones to prevent people
draining water from lakes
and rivers, and organisations
have relaxed dress-codes –
including the MCC, which
told members they would
not have to wear a jacked in
the Lord’s pavilion for the
first two days of the England-
Ireland Test match.
Some homeowners have
reported windows shatter-
ing in the severe heat, while
roads have melted in Man-
chester and trains were can-
celled due to overheating.
But the LSE warned that
not enough was being done
to warn of the severity of
heatwaves and called for
official names for periods of
extremely hot weather like
those brought in for storms
by the Met Office in 2015.
This year has already seen
storms Freya, Gareth,
Hannah batter Britain and
next up will be Idris.
“Far more people have
died from recent heatwaves
than from storms, so it
should be uncontroversial to
start applying names to
both,” said Bob Ward, of the
Grantham Research Insti-
tute on Climate Change and
the Environment.
Public Health England has
estimated that there were
863 deaths attributable to
three heatwave periods last
summer.
It has issued a level-two
“alert and readiness” warn-
ing with older people urged
to close their curtains and
avoid going outside during
the hottest part of the day.
u A body has been found at
Cotswold Water Park, Glos,
after reports that a swimmer
had disappeared in a lake at
1.40pm yesterday. A man’s
body was retrieved just be-
fore 9pm. Meanwhile, a
search began at Shadwell
Basin, an east London dock-
land, last night after a man,
believed to be 22, was swim-
ming with friends and did
not resurface.Judith Woods: Page 18
Weather: Page 38Schoolboy, 11, thrilled
at kickabout with Messi
A SCHOOLBOY from Kent
has told how he enjoyed a
kickabout on a Caribbean
beach holiday with Lionel
Messi.
Anna O’Neill, from Can-
terbury, filmed her 11-year-
old son Mackenzie with the
Barcelona and Argentina
footballer and his six-year-
old son, Thiago.
Ms O’Neill, 41, said she
had been looking after her
14-month-old toddler in her
room at a resort in Antigua
when her son arrived to tell
her the footballer was on the
beach. “I’m not a football fan
at all, so when Mackenzie
said, ‘oh my God, mum,
Messi is on the beach’, I was
just like, ‘who?’,” she said.
After messaging her
brother and searching Mes-
si’s name on Google, Ms
O’Neill headed to the beach
to see the Argentinian with
her son and other children,
where they had been playing
for half an hour.
“It was such a sweet expe-
rience,” Ms O’Neill said.
“He was a really nice guy,”
Mackenzie added.More people have
died from recent
heat than storms,
experts warn
Booker novel written
in a single sentence
By Anita Singh
ArtS And entertAinment
editor
IF YOU’RE looking for a
long read, the Booker Prize
has just the thing.
Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks,
Newburyport, one of 13
novels in the running for the
literary award, consists of a
single sentence running
over 1,000 pages.
It is the interior mono-
logue of an Ohio housewife
ruminating on everything
from dinner party menus to
the dark side of Trump’s
America, a stream-of-
consciousness written with-
out paragraphs or full stops.
The 426,100-word
sentence is broken only a
handful of times, by a
parallel story written from
the perspective of a
mountain lion.
Ellmann’s usual publisher,
Bloomsbury, turned down
the novel but it was picked
up by the comparatively tiny
Galley Beggar Press.
The Booker Prize judges
called it “extraordinary” and
“like nothing you’ve ever
read before”. Joanna
MacGregor, the conductor,
pianist and composer who is
serving as one of this year’s
judges, said readers should
not be put off.
“The thing to know is that
it’s extremely funny. So
although it looks very dense
and worrying on the page,
actually every single page is
full of puns and jokes. And
there is a plot in there.
“You just have to read as
much as you can of it and
then put it down and come
back to it,” she said.
Familiar names on the
longlist include Margaret At-
wood, Jeanette Winterson
and Salman Rushdie. At-
wood’s The Testaments is a
soon-to-be-published sequel
to The Handmaid’s Tale, with
a plot so secret the judges
had to sign a “ferocious”
non-disclosure agreement.
The shortlist of six books
will be announced on Sept 3
and the winner on Oct 14.
Peter Florence, chairman
of the judges, said: “These
writers offer joy and hope.
Really – read all of them.”Arts: Page 27
Editorial Comment: Page 19DUNCAN MCGLYNNNews
A swimmer basks in
the sunshine in a
pool at the Jupiter
Artland sculpture
park near Edinburgh‘Government
and itsagencies,
including the
Met Office,must lead the
way in[relaying]
the growing
dangers ofheatwaves’
The temptation to take a
cold shower before bed
during a heatwave will
result in a bad night’s
sleep, experts have said.
Instead, taking a warm
shower or bath will help
the body to relax and
regulate its temperature,
resulting in a better
night’s sleep. Your body
temperature needs to be
lowered by one degree to
get a good night’s sleep
and having a cold shower
could actually raise it,
according to Dr Neil
Stanley, a sleep expert.
The UK was expected to
reach night-time highs of
75.2F (24C) in some parts
of south east England last
night, which would be
the highest minimum
temperature on record.Don’t chill out
Key to good sleepРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS