With another heatwave just beginning, I am thinking a lot about how little prepared we are in the UK for dealing with high temperatures: Homes with curtains and carpets which are designed to keep the heat in; towns where every building is surrounded by hard surfaces which magnify the heat; the general lack of shade in gardens, parks and city streets which makes it hard to find relief from the unrelenting sunshine.

When I lived in hotter countries, I felt the benefit of shutters on the outside of the windows which keep the inside cooler, and trees which shade people walking on pavements and waiting at bus stops.

As householders, there is a certain amount we can do to mitigate the effects of the heatwave: We are lucky to live in a house with a good sized garden with plenty of mature trees and shrubs, but we have a patio outside our back door which heats up in the morning and stays hot for much of the afternoon. We are considering buying retractable awnings to shade the patio and our windows, and therefore keeping the worst of the heat out of the house.

But on the community and national level, surely there are planning decisions and housebuilding regulations which should be put in place to make buildings and other areas more bearable in these extreme temperatures, thereby limiting the negative effects for people and avoiding at least some of the excess deaths which are caused every time we experience a heatwave, which is happening ever more frequently.

We could have regulations around making sure there is shade and plant cover on the street – plant trees, have more grass verges. School playing fields could have plenty of shade from trees. Car parks could have roofs with solar panels, providing shade as well as a source of power generation. Houses could be built with overhangs or exterior shutters to keep out some of the heat. There are plenty of possibilities, but it doesn’t feel as if there is much discussion around these kinds of strategies, and I wonder whether we aren’t being a bit blasé as a country about the inevitable, increasing impact of global heating on our lives.

Here are Grandpa’s linocut prints representing the month of June: