Despite all the political activity of the last few weeks, it really has been this summer’s hot and lingering weather that will remain long in the mind.
For those of us who are old enough to remember it, rivalling the summer of 1976.
I’ve already written about how this kind of weather really should be a wake-up call to politicians and everyone else.
And while trying to reduce carbon emissions over the decades ahead is absolutely vital to try to reduce the impact of heatwaves in the long term, we do have to appreciate that these changes may take generations to fully take effect.
That doesn’t mean, as some politicians seem to suggest, that we should hold up our hands and admit defeat before the battle against climate change has ever begun.
But we do need to accept the fact that we aren’t going to change things overnight and prepare ourselves to make changes now to make life more bearable in the short to medium term.
Central to this is the construction and development industry at a time when the government is trying to press ahead with the country's largest housing expansion for decades.
Housebuilders have been good over recent years in creating homes that have good insulation in the cold winter months.
As a total amateur, I would have thought that would mean the insulation would help to keep extreme warmth out during hot summers – but apparently that isn’t the case as many householders have learned this summer.
In some countries, like the US and Australia, homes are routinely built with air conditioning equipment.
That isn’t the case in the UK where the technology is mainly confined to business premises like shops, offices, hotels and restaurants.
Adding it to new homes would be incredibly expensive and retrofitting fixed systems to existing homes would be both costly and very disruptive.
Mobile systems can be brought in, but their effectiveness is limited and they can be very expensive to run.
What is probably better than that is to build homes with a more Mediterranean look.
Like most people in this country, I like the traditional look of brick-built homes.
But would it be better to build homes that are painted white, or a light colour, to reflect the sunlight that can be absorbed by dark bricks and build up the heat in the house?
Would it be good to build homes with outdoor shutters over windows, especially on south- and west-facing walls?
As it gets hotter and sunnier it makes sense to install solar panels as standard, but obviously, their safety needs to be checked after recent concerning incidents of panels sparking fires.
It is possible to get windows which reflect some UV light and reduce radiation heat, and special film can be bought to go on existing windows.
And of course trying to get any cold breeze flowing through a house is important, although that is no use in the kind of extreme, humid heat we suffered at the end of June.
Architects need to take these kinds of issues into account, but it isn’t just up to them.
The public has to accept that the look of the traditional British home will have to change.
At least the temperatures near the east coast have eased a bit over the last few days and there has been a bit of cloud to be seen.
I’ve been able to get back into my small conservatory.
One thing I am planning to do is to put new reflective panels on the roof to keep the heat down (and make it warmer in the winter).
And having done a bit of Googling over the last few weeks, we’ll probably start thinking about how to improve the heat resilience of our home over the next few months.
We do have to accept that the way we live our life is going to have to change.
I hope 2026 is an outlier a bit like 1976.
But listening to experts, I don’t really believe that, and everyone needs to prepare for a world in which this kind of summer seems quite normal.
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