In this nanny state of ours, warm weather – or “the heatwave from hell” as the headline writers had it – is not a cause for enjoyment; it’s a threat to be endured, in the same way as a hurricane or a pandemic.

There was a clear and present “danger to life” that would pile pressure on the NHS, the Met Office warned as the temperature rose. The Government held a Cobra meeting to discuss the impending crisis, and officials spoke of declaring the first-ever national heatwave emergency.

How did we get from “hope you’re enjoying the warm weather” to that? Must we see absolutely everything these days only in terms of warnings?

Yes, it’s hot outside and, yes, it’s important to wear sun cream, drink water and open the window, but let’s not lose our sense of perspective. Many people actually prefer it that way.

You could include in their number the tens of thousands who flocked to the Great Yorkshire Show this week. Had they followed the Government’s advice they would have herded themselves into the cattle sheds for shade, but instead they sat on the lawns in short sleeves, sipping cold Pimms and warm Theakston’s, because that’s what a proper British summer is all about.

On the beaches it was the same story. You had to queue for ice cream in Bridlington because so many people had taken advantage of the sunshine to feel the sand in their toes. Thank goodness for the tourist trade that those visitors took the health alerts with a pinch of salt.

The warnings were surprisingly thorough. They were compiled after the heatwave of 2003 melted part of the M25, and their pages include dire predictions of train tracks bursting into flames and of power shortages brought on by the demand for cooling fans. If only the officials who wrote them had made the same contingencies for a pandemic.

A clue as to why they did not is contained in the detail about the M25 – for heatwaves are a predominantly southern problem. There has never been such an immediate or disproportionate response to snowstorms in the Pennines, or to floods in the Calder Valley, and the country cannot be considered truly levelled-up until there is.

The government body responsible for the prophecies of doom is the UK Health Security Agency, which has been in existence for only a year and needs to demonstrate that it’s worth the money we are all spending on it. Thus, on Monday it declared a “level three heat-health alert”, with the threat that it would increase to level four if the temperature continued on its upward trajectory. These are measurements you expect to see preceded by the word Defcon in the event of war, not just because the sun’s out.

It’s frankly scaremongering; unhelpful and, in places, transparently inaccurate. You could, for instance, put a cooling fan in every room of every house and use just a fraction as much power as we consume in winter.

And while the warnings about basic health precautions are sensible, they don’t compensate for not being able to see an actual doctor when we need one.

At the root of the problem is the wholly unnecessary practice by successive governments of trying to meddle in every aspect of our lives – partly in the name of public relations but mostly to cover their backs in the event that something goes wrong and we all turn up at A&E one afternoon with sunstroke.

I blame the Met Office for this: they created their system of silly “yellow snow warnings” after failing to forecast the great hurricane of 1987, and it has become a template for every other department. It’s no coincidence, incidentally, that those storms affected mostly the south of England.

The end result is that an all-too-rare spell of nice weather, something that could be a cause for celebration, becomes just another reason not to let our children play outside.

I’m aware, obviously, that working in an un-airconditioned office or factory in this weather is not ideal, but nor is it the end of the world. That would be Defcon 5. So my response to my correspondent this week was, Yes, I am indeed enjoying the warm weather, and shall continue to do so for as long as it lasts – or until they make it illegal.

Warnings? I will enjoy the warm weather until they make it illegal - David Behrens