Peter Rhodes on more gyms, temperature inflation and bison who just want to be free

Last week’s heatwave has naturally alarmed foreigners planning to visit England.

Briefed to expect rain and fog, they are suddenly confronted with Apocalypse Scorchio. Thankfully, one American website for tourists gives a thorough analysis of British weather, including this gem: “Winter is the coldest month in the UK .”

Did the BBC exaggerate what was coming? This time last week the Beeb’s online forecast for my little patch of England carried the scary headline: 39C. Yet the hour-by-hour sections of the same charts indicated nothing hotter than 38C, and that for only a couple of hours. Temperature inflation, Auntie?

Blazing July brought some compensations, in my case a few idle hours in a cool room to finish a book that has haunted me for more than half my life.

The Story of San Michele, by the Swedish doctor Axel Munthe, was one of the best-selling books of the 20th century but is now rarely seen. My father gave me a copy 40 years ago and said it had changed his life. Since then, I have opened and closed it dozens of times but never made much progress.

I have finally finished it, discovering a dazzling sequence of anecdotes ranging from belly-laugh comedy to the most acute agony.

I defy anyone not to weep at Munthe’s account of closing a little boy’s coffin, or to disagree with his neat insights into the human condition, including: “Old people are generally less unhappy than young people would expect them to be.”

Intruding on my reading was the crash-thump of buildings being demolished and piles being sunk for a new fitness centre a quarter-mile away. It is a strange thing about Britain as a nation that the more fitness centres we build, the less fit we become.

Four European bison have been released near Canterbury in an ambitious rewilding programme.

Let us hope their enclosure is better than the one at the ill-fated American Adventure theme park in Derbyshire.

The attractions included a herd of North American bison and shortly after its opening in 1987 one of them escaped and reportedly “created havoc” in nearby Heanor.

I have no idea how this story ended but it may have involved peppercorn sauce.