Farewell, mini heatwave

What is the definition of a heatwave? Here's my attempt:

"5 days or more in succession where daily summer temperatures exceed the average by five degrees or more"

Heatwaves, as you may have noticed, are rare in Britain. Charles II, who spent his years in exile in Europe, where they know how to do a proper summer, described English summers as "two fine days followed by a thunderstorm". You have to admit, he wasn't far wrong. And indeed, thus ended our mini heatwave here in South Wales, after just two days.
          Our house is not well equipped to deal with heat. It builds up through the day, accumulating on the upper floors, so that by bedtime the bedroom is unbearably oppressive. Windows flung open make no difference, or even make it worse. A large, powerful fan only seems to push hot air around. Then follow nights of fitful sleep, continually waking into hot sweats, menopause notwithstanding. Yet to some extent I love the heat. One can wander around scantily clad, revelling in the brilliant sunlight, working on our homegrown tan and hoping, paradoxically, that it is going to last.
          I can remember three proper heatwaves in my life: 1959, in my childhood, when a glorious summer seemed to last forever, at least in my memory, 1976, the year of the Great Drought, when water supplies were rationed and even cut off for hours at a time, except for me, as I was living in a hospital apartment at the time. Friends would come round just to avail themselves of my shower facilities. Finally, 2003, the daddy of them all, when for weeks on end the temperatures rose into the 30s and, the day before it finally came to an end, just outside London, a temperature of over 38 degrees (100 degrees in old money) was recorded for the first time in 300 years.
          Usually the hottest day of a heatwave does indeed occur on the day before it ends. Yesterday the temperature at 3pm in our garden reached 31 degrees. (The previous day it reached 28 degrees in the north of Scotland, where, bizarrely, it was the hottest place in Britain, a situation that happens no more than twice a year, and even then it is usually winter when it does happen.) Then at two in the morning a plume of damp, slightly cooler air swept in from the Atlantic and a chain of thunderstorms drifted eastwards across southern Britain. It woke me, though strangely not my wife, who must have been more sleep-deprived than me from the previous sticky night.
          Tonight will be a cooler night, but even so I feel a sense of sadness. A heatwave ending is like losing a lover, a beautiful, tempestuous and even dangerous lover, one we are besotted with, one we are probably better off losing, but one we miss nonetheless. Perhaps one day she will come back, and we can re-enter that strange, love/hate thing all over again...