"FUN fact", says the lovely Sudanese neighbour last Wednesday. "My sources tell me that yesterday Northern Ireland was hotter than Sudan."
Even if the number-crunchers boot it out again and though some locals met the fierce temperature with "this isn’t right", a shy Ards townland backing into record books was a break from stupefying British politics, and Covid dread.
A London paper reported a newly-minted joke that Ballywatticock came from the Irish baile meaning townland and uaiteacoc ‘with a big thermometer’.
It was a reminder of what connects us with each other, and the world.
Climate measuring devices in Castlederg and along Strangford tell us where we rate globally.
Searing, unaccustomed heat and the spectacles of floods in China and fires in Siberia are as unnerving as soaring infection rates paired with British political cowardice, stupidity mixed with dogma.
But one step at a time and without giving gyp to anyone who chooses to go slower, those of us lucky enough to be well need to gear up for more social contact. While also minding ourselves and others.
Masks and restrictions bring out the worst in some. Roads melting in often damp and chilly places and record high temperatures will not mean that fact-deniers catch themselves on.
A striking aspect of Covid running alongside climate disaster is how similar the conspiracists are.
The DUP’s chief whip and former Stormont minister for the environment – oh yes he was - will not be admitting on ‘angry man’ radio that he has been crude and dismissive about the causes of global warming and the urgent need to tackle it.
Like other DUP figures, how wrong and offensive he has been, when you think of it, on so much for so many years: gay people, the Irish language, people of colour other than his own off-white.
As the sun beats down on Ballywatticock and New York skies are fuzzed with the smoke of fires thousands of miles away, there will however be no apology. Oh for goodness sake. Doubling down is what Trumpian ranters do.
Though let us not dwell on it. The Covid war is not over and may never be but flexing social muscles is a necessary next step.
It’s necessary for the most endangered that the better able take that step and bring back word, and cheer, and any news to be found that might lift spirits rather than cast them down. And the messages.
For back-up, there is always a book or two to prompt fresh thoughts and shake up old ones, as per a review of a couple of new ones and advance word on others due in the autumn.
"The politics of mask-wearing, already fractious, will become more so as shops, buses and trains fill up," writes Joe Moran in The Guardian. "When can we chat casually with strangers again, if we ever did it in the first place? Is shaking hands now abolished?"
He notes the recent surveys that show hardened attitudes towards immigrants, refugees, others deemed to be outsiders.
"Our broken politics... mean that conversations between strangers often move quickly into rancour and name-calling." (He might as well be talking of the north of Ireland)
He recommends a Joe Keohane newly-published book with the subtitle The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World, The Power of Strangers, and another called Hello Stranger: How We Find Connection in a Disconnected World by Will Buckingham.
Some are moving more readily than others, some already out there are behaving like eejits.
The unaccustomed heat of recent weeks is temptation to stay in the shade, in any space you can call your own. But that isn’t much healthier than pretending that it’s always been this hot.
Out we go into a hot and messy world because some of us have to earn a living and provide for others, and for the rest of us because it’s the world we have.
