Sunbather Turns Other Cheek as Readings Soar

Railway tracks have buckled. Scottish roads are melting. One sunbather’s skirt caught fire.

Not everyone would call temperatures in the high 80s a heat wave. But to the fair-skinned British, more used to drizzle and chill, “flaming June” has arrived with a vengeance.

“We’ve got to make the most of it, this could be the only summer we get,” said Linda Beecham as she exposed pale arms to the sun in London’s Trafalgar Square on Friday. Her 11-year-old son Neil wore a baseball cap with a battery-operated fan.

There wasn’t even a chance of a cooling dip in the square’s famous fountains, which were turned off for a facelift.

The baking heat set in on Tuesday. On Thursday, sunbather Kim Bullock, 18, of Witham, east of London, suffered slight burns when metal tassels on her skirt heated up in the sun and set the fabric abaze.