{"id":344374,"date":"2025-08-14T17:12:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T17:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/344374\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T17:12:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T17:12:14","slug":"london-heatwave-etiquette-how-to-behave-at-the-park-and-not-be-a-pariah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/344374\/","title":{"rendered":"London heatwave etiquette : How to behave at the park and not be a pariah"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"STYLE\"<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing quite like summer in the city. Fighting for elbow room at the only two sunny bistro tables on the high street; racing for the last seat in the pub garden; playing Tetris with picnic blankets, and queueing for the lido only to swim in a soup of pool water, SPF and other people\u2019s sweat.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a whole new etiquette<\/a> to observe. Here are the dos and donts if you don\u2019t want to be the social pariah of your local park<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Do teach your dog about picnics <\/p>\n

Ie, not to eat them, especially as they always go for the top drawer stuff. I know Parma ham is a treat for them; it is also a treat for me. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Pexels<\/p>\n

Speakers are unavoidable in the city, and since there\u2019s not much peace and quiet to be found in most London<\/a> parks \u2014 between the dogs, nearby traffic, sirens, and click clack of stolen Lime bikes dubbed Hackney birdsong \u2014 a good soundtrack can even be welcome. But read the room. If there\u2019s a toddler\u2019s birthday party nearby (every 15 metres in my local, and at full capacity near the splash park) then skip the explicit versions of anything. Nothing scream-y, no songs without words. If in doubt: Beyonce, Dolly, Madonna. <\/p>\n

Fountains are only fair game for the under 10s<\/p>\n

I walked through Granary Square in Kings Cross<\/a> this week, and saw a hundred or so children treating the spray jets as a splash park. As they should. Who shouldn\u2019t: the grown men I saw limbering up for it. <\/p>\n

Don\u2019t ogle the sunbathers <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

gen z travel icks <\/p>\n

HBO<\/p>\n

During a heatwave<\/a>, any patch of grass is fair game for sunbathing (even a grassy traffic island, in a pinch). If a woman in a bikini is visible from the road, do not honk at her. She is mentally spending her lunch hour on a Greek island, and you are ruining it. <\/p>\n

Don\u2019t moan about all the kids at the lido<\/p>\n

Yes, you can barely manage to complete a lap; yes, they\u2019re packed in like sardines; yes, that one is probably having a wee. But your lido season ticket doesn\u2019t entitle you to a child-free summer at the pool \u2014 and I say this as someone without kids. <\/p>\n

Do put your top back on when you leave the park <\/p>\n

Beyond your back garden, it\u2019s socially acceptable to have your top off in the park, on a canal path, or in sight of the river. I suppose you can have it off while driving your car, but I\u2019ve no idea why you\u2019d want to, and this will be readable in my facial expression. And just to make this really clear, places that you should put your top back on include the bus, the tube, the overground even though it has windows, and Tesco, even if you are using self-checkout. <\/p>\n

Don\u2019t bring a little foil barbecue in the park<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Big Green Egg <\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t the space and they\u2019re rubbish, as well as banned at many green spaces. Your little black cloud of coal smoke will choke us all while your sausages slowly, slowly – so slowly – sputter towards cooked over a period of 90 minutes. At which point you will bite into them and then discuss at length if they\u2019re cooked properly in the middle, before rolling the dice because you\u2019ve invested too much time not to. <\/p>\n

I am, however, pro-wheeling your proper metal barbecue to the park, as I saw in Kennington earlier this summer. Smelled lovely, didn\u2019t scorch the grass, allowed for actual cooking, made me wish I was invited. If you live close enough to bring your whole set-up then I am all admiration. <\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s close enough to eavesdrop – too close to avoid it, actually, so we can all hear every word. Pretend you can\u2019t. <\/p>\n

Too far, especially without headphones. The park is all of our shared back garden, but that doesn\u2019t mean I want to catch up on your mum\u2019s news too. Also rude: work zoom calls on your poor overheating laptop, especially if you\u2019re talking about marketing. <\/p>\n

You\u2019re angering them, then wafting their fury in my direction. You should also not flap at bees, but this time it\u2019s because they\u2019re nice and we need them, and they\u2019re not bothering you anyway. <\/p>\n

if there\u2019s a sudden tropical rainstorm and you\u2019re underneath the only big tree, a state of emergency overrides the unwritten laws of personal space. The same doesn\u2019t go for crowding the last sunny patch of the park at the end of the day, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s nothing quite like summer in the city. Fighting for elbow room at the only two sunny bistro…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,84277,4884,2461,15140,257,1687,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-344374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-etiquette","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-heatwave","13":"tag-kings-cross","14":"tag-london","15":"tag-park","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115028239709417198","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}