This heatwave proves it’s the unrivalled British ability to enjoy (and moan about) sun that really sets us apart

The rest of the world likes to think that rain is the weather condition most associated with Britain and the one that best contributes to our eccentricity.

But, as a Briton who at 9.05am this morning finally cracked and spent £287 on an air conditioner and had to rush to buy the last one at my local B&Q in a bid to avoid another sweltering night with a sleepless two-year-old, I can say with certainty that our peculiar behaviour is best blamed on the sun.

Our ability to both enjoy and moan about hot weather is unrivalled.

I considered this notion as I contemplated writing about a whole range of meatier subjects for my blog, such as Greece, Heathrow, terrorism or even hearing yet another education secretary who has never attended a state school, much less taught at one, deriding the system she presides over.

But there’s a heatwave, don’t you know! Why bother discussing those other topics when it’s gloriously/insanely hot outside?

Indeed, today is set to be the most sizzling, searing, sweltering and scorching day of the year, the warmest since 2006 and the hottest July 1 on record.

In yet more tabloid parlance – as hardly anyone else would ever use such phrases in normal conversations – the mercury is set to soar to 36C (97F).

Having written dozens of weather stories for newspapers during my increasingly jaded news reporting days, I know just how obsessed people can be about the weather.

I probably had more interest in a few quickly trotted out paragraphs on roads melting in the heat than I ever had on stories I had worked really hard on.

And, from this alone, I believe that Britons are preoccupied with the sun more than anything else.

It’s like a red rag to a bull. We are constantly seeking it – and yet, when we have it, we love to moan about it.

Any visitor to this island will be bemused by how every patch of green (or, in London, yellow) public space will be crammed as soon as Mr Sun has got his hat on.

They will also be astonished how many natives shun the shade and prefer to eat under its full glare, ensuring their food sweats as much as they do.

But if temperatures remain above 25C (77F) for more than a couple of days, then you can expect to hear a chorus of polite cries: “It’s a bit too hot.”

Any longer and cue mass complaining – especially among Londoners commuting through what sometimes feels like the depths of Hell in our Underground system.

After this, commences panicked trips to B&Q and other DIY stores to purchase some form of cooling device.

In the past, I have resorted to buying a fan, until realising that such basic technology merely offers the distraction of either a hot breeze or a warm hurricane for relief.

And yet, as much as we might complain about the heat, deep down we secretly want it to be as hot as possible.

We revel in being told that it’s warmer than Rio or some other tropical place -and marvel (normally disguised as moaning) in how the rails, roads and every other part of our basic infrastructure is melting.

We wonder if we will see the 100-Fahrenheit mark be broken again – as it did for the first and only time when the British record of 38.5C (101.3F) was set in 2003.

We contemplate whether the heatwave be as long as the one in the fabled summer of 1976, when for 25 days straight the temperature hit at least 26.7C (80F).

Those even older might ponder whether we might see a repeat of 1959, when Britain went 100 days without either rain or the temperature dipping below 21C (70C).

And, of course, when the rain does come and the, er, mercury falls back to a moderate level, most of us will be a little – if not greatly - disappointed.

We are so obsessed by the sun that we have gotten used to telling ourselves and others that we really do live in an especially cold and damp country.

It took my wife, who grew up with the North American extremes of long, hot summers and long, sub-zero winters, to finally dispel this myth for me.

What we actually have, at least in southern England, is incredibly mild, unremarkable weather with an average range of about 18 degrees between winter and summer.

For example, barring a few days of the year and not including hilly locations, it would very difficult for a young, healthy person to die from exposure here.

And it’s really not as wet as we think, either.

For instance, London receives about half as much rain as Tokyo, two thirds as much as New York and, indeed, less than almost every other major American city, including sweltering Dallas, which averages 37 inches of rainfall per year, compared to the notoriously wet British capital’s 29.

But the averages do not matter when it comes to discussions about weather; it is the aberrations that are talked about.

And, on that note, as I now begin to sweat over how I’ll carry that heavy air conditioner upstairs to my son’s bedroom, I’ll end this unusual saunter out of my usual, politically-driven topics of debate.