What shall I tell my friend when she smells in the heat?

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a day ago

As a July baby, I am on the side of sunshine and the causes of sunshine. Warmth is my medium. When the local TV news carried a 'yellow heat health alert' – the condition formerly known as 'summer' – yesterday, I rolled my eyes. Don't talk to me about heat. Some of us are old enough to remember the summer of 1976, when it was so hot for so long that the tarmac on the pavements melted and the lampposts dipped like wading birds.
Lawns were crispy brown and people queued at standpipes for water. No one had heard of 'air con' and sunscreen was in its infancy. We didn't really bother with it. I remember the agony of badly burnt shoulders on Bri-Nylon sheets in a seaside boarding house. Somehow the artificial fibres, slithery to the touch, made it worse. Can that be right?
A heatwave is not 'three or four days' as a TV weatherman tried to claim. Wimps!
When I tweeted my memories of the summer of '76, several people raised me the sizzling summer of '59, before my time. 'Now that really was a summer from May 5 to mid-October,' Michael recalled. 'Weeks and weeks of hot weather.'
Anyway, yesterday I finally cracked and broke my vow to never ever complain when we have great weather in this country. The dog was miserable and could only be walked at first light or after 8pm. I put ice cubes in Bingo's water. I had the fan on all night Monday into Tuesday, but I still woke up feeling like I hadn't had any joined-up sleep, so I was tetchy.
And then there was the unmentionable problem: body odour. Two showers a day to try and keep the sweat at bay. But what about other stinky people – do you say something or not?
I met a friend for a coffee at my club in London; Sarah had just got off the Tube, where the heat had gathered in the tunnels like a furnace and the air was unbearable: soupy and stagnant. When Sarah dipped in for a hug, the pong made my eyes water. KO'd by BO! She said she had her office summer party in a couple of hours and I wondered if I should tell her. Tell her what exactly? 'You smell, darling?' 'How about some more deodorant?'
What if she was mortified? There is no sweat etiquette that I'm aware of. But I couldn't let my friend enter a room with all of her staff and have them thinking the new boss had terrible personal hygiene. On the other hand, a polite form of words eluded me. I pulled out some perfume from my bag and sprayed her generously with it.
'Do I pong?' she laughed.
'Er, a bit sweaty, yes.'
'Ah, thank you for telling me.'
Sarah reminded me that she totally lost her sense of smell after Covid. 'It's good because I can't smell anyone else. Trouble is, I can't smell if I smell either.'
We went to the powder room and Sarah had what my grandmother used to call a 'strip wash' while I held her blouse. Her body was now clean, but the blouse was impregnated with sweat. I applied lashings of perfume under its arms and over her hair.
I just got a text from Sarah: 'After you washed me and sprayed me with perfume I went to that office party. There was no air movement at all and I was talking to the most wonderful, suave, handsome Frenchman. I'm sure all he could smell was the strange combination of leftover BO and your scent. He thought I was a party girl on the pull – it was great!'
I'm glad I told Sarah about the BO because, I guess, I'd hope someone would be honest with me – and that I wouldn't take offence. Meanwhile, I made a mental note to travel everywhere with a can of 72-hour odour protection and a change of top. Even a July baby was prepared to concede that, just for once, it was too darn hot. And then, this morning, the loveliest sound in the world: rain!
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