I wish people would stop moaning about the Scottish weather.

Returning holidaymakers are the worst. "This country would be perfect if it weren't so cold," they opine wistfully, before waxing lyrical about eating al fresco and how Mediterraean tomatoes are nothing like the ones you get in Sainsbury's. Apparently life would be idyllic beyond imagining if only the sun shone every day between May and October, and we could all go about our daily lives wearing nothing but flip-flops and a belly button ring.

I beg to differ. Burn me as a heretic on a pyre of Thomas Cook brochures for saying so, but hot weather is not synonymous with paradise. It is actually a bit of a drag. I admit this is especially true if your ancestors were chilly Celts, Angles and Vikings instead of sun-soaked Greeks, Romans and Iberians. Our genes simply do not equip us for blazing heat. Why do we do it, we northern Europeans, turning up on Mediterranean beaches in August with skin the colour and texture of bread dough and bake it at 35 degrees for six hours a day, till it reaches the shade of pumpernickel with undertones of angry lobster?

Partly we do it because it's simply too hot in Spain, Greece or Turkey to do anything but lie panting on the ground. In the cool UK climate, it is possible to keep busy and active all day long. That is a good thing. You might need your brolly, but it's a rare downpour that brings daily life to a standstill.

In hot regions, by contrast, life slows to a crawl between 11am and 3pm, when everyone sensible stays indoors to avoid the energy-sapping and potentially dangerous heat. Not we crazy rosbifs, of course, who consider that the best bit of the day. Staying inside when the temperature is over 20 degrees celsius would be considered positively offensive here at home and we take that mentality with us. No wonder doctors in major package holiday destinations have recovery rooms available 24 hours a day for sunstroke victims.

Holidaymakers who have come home edit out the annoying aspects of a hot climate. They remember the delightful warm sea water but forget what it is like to have sweaty sun cream drip into their eyes; they remember watching the sun go down with a bottle of local beer, but forget what a nuisance the mosquitoes were.

I don't lie on too many beaches, being of the aforementioned Anglo-Celtic heritage with skin that goes from white to red with no in-between, but I did recently go to Turkey. It's a wonderful country, with friendly people, excellent food and spectacular ancient sites. It is very hot and very dry, but you have to prepare yourself for the weather before you go out, just like at home. You cannot just "pop out" in 35-degree heat; you have to go through the rigmarole of applying sun cream to every inch of exposed flesh and loading up with half your body weight in water to prevent dehydration. Stepping out into the midday chill the day after we returned was blissful.

Earlier this summer, we had two glorious weeks of Scottish sunshine. The landscape was resplendent in the lush lime green of mid summer, more so than Spain, Italy or the south of France would have been in July. We have the rain to thank for that.

There are many, more significant advantages to the British climate that we simply take for granted. We need not worry that an insect bite will transmit malaria, a disease which is endemic in dozens of countries on and near the equator; we need never fear water shortages, an issue that is predicted to be the main cause of war and conflict over the next century. We are unfairly spoiled by our grey, dreich, dismal climate, yet we moan about it constantly.

But we never get a proper summer here, weep the complainers, fretting over their fading tans, as if living in Scotland equated to being exiled to some unspeakable gulag. I wish they would put a (thick woolly) sock in it. It's true that the Scottish summer is unpredictable, but we had a decent one this year, and autumn is a delight. People come here from other countries - hot countries - to play golf and go walking because they appreciate its advantages even if we don't.

So bring on the blustery winds. Bring on the rain flurries. Bring on the cold, bright sunshine that sets the red leaves on fire. The heat we can live without.