With temperatures set to near 40C over the coming days, you could say decking the halls is not quite the priority for most people.

But a Christmas shop in Strood is already preparing for the festivities on what could be hottest day ever recorded in the UK.

Shop owner Tim Bill talks about how the intense heat affects his business plans

Time Christmas, which is based on Medway City Estate, is not only open for business but has been taking pre-orders since May.

Director Tim Bill said peak time is between September and late January, when they are fully open to the public, but trade never really stops.

He said: "Christmas is all-year-round for us. During our peak time we’ve had two-hour queues to get in here. It’s chaos. There were 1,000 people coming down here a day.

"At the moment, nobody is coming to the showroom or into the store, we're only working with click and collect orders.

"Weirdly and strangely, we've actually been selling quite a lot during the rest of the year. Not loads of tinsel or Santas, but Christmas lights can definitely be re-purposed for other occasions.

"People are buying lots of bulb lights to put in their gardens, which is what everybody's into at the minute. We sell hundreds of them a week.

"We've also been selling normal Christmas lights to be used as fairy lights.

"For Valentine' Day, for example, we did a Valentine tree and sold red flowers, which was quite popular with our customers.

"And most recently, for the Jubilee, we've sold many blue, red, and white lights.

"It’s obviously nothing compared to our Christmas sales, but it definitely keeps us going the rest of the year. We don’t stay shut or doing nothing."

Despite the good sales, the boiling temperatures are making Tim struggle to work on the shop's showroom, which proved to be a popular family attraction during the pandemic.

The enclosed room on the second floor is fully blacked-out, no windows, and has more than 2,000 Christmas lights and decorations plugged in at once.

Recently, the shop owner said he can only spend up to an hour a day as the "Santa sauna" can be as warm as 38 degrees with no ventilation.

He said: "In this heat, we’ll wait until later so it cools down and come back later on in the evenings. Otherwise it’s just too hot to work up here, especially on days like we've seen recently.

"We’re trying to build an ice scene, but it’s 40 degrees in here. It’s definitely a weird place to be but we obviously need to get ready for this year’s holidays.

He was fearful to know how much warmer it would get as the hottest day of the year approached.

Speaking last week he said: "It's only started getting warm now. So we'll probably only have another couple of weeks before it's just too hot to be able to do anything.

"Last year I couldn't stop sweating. It was pure chaos. I think we could only spend about an hour in a day because it's all blacked out.

"I've got bottles of water downstairs, ice cream in the fridge. That's where we are with it.

"But at the end of the day's offer a good cause. Christmas can't wait."