Even if 36.7C was genuinely the hottest July reading since records were kept, this would still have been way short of the 38.5C recorded at Faversham on August 16 2003; or that famous day, August 3 1990, when Cheltenham registered 37.1C and local records were broken all over the country, which still stand. I recall that afternoon showing my young sons the thermometer in our shaded West Country courtyard reading 98F, before taking it out into the sun to see it shooting off the top at 130F.