What is August for? Of all the months in the year, it lacks purpose. The days are long and hot, or long and damp, or just long. The politicians are on holiday. The children are on holiday. The parents of the children are on holiday. And everyone else is slogging away in the haze. In a way, you have to feel sorry for August. It's the nothing month - not much happens, no one cares. May gets the elections, June has Wimbledon, July celebrates the end of term and September ushers in the academic year and party conferences (which makes me feel deeply sad for September, but in a different way). What does August have? Nothing but exam results, which only confirms its anti-month status. In France and Italy, the cities empty of everyone but sweaty tourists. The Europeans surrender, pack their bags and flee.

You can't help but think that the Roman emperor Augustus Caesar would be disappointed with how his month has fared as the centuries have passed. Augustus (who ruled in that quiet patch from 27BC to 14AD) was officially called Gaius Julius Caesar but was renamed Augustus, meaning "revered one", by the Senate. For a bonus prize they named the month after him, too (nowadays you just get an airport - JFK, Charles de Gaulle - which isn't nearly as grand). He must have been so pleased, so proud. His name lives on as the adjective august, meaning venerable, majestic and noble, none of which comfortably applies to the month. August is about as majestic and noble as a cancelled flight in the middle of a life-threatening heatwave.

The English, for once, had it right. The old English calendar - pre-William the Conqueror, pre-sophistication, pre-hygiene - called the eighth month Weodmonað, meaning "weed month". What a lovely example of our best national trait: understatement. The theory goes that it refers to the burst of vegetation at this time of year, but you can't escape the association. The month is weedy, wet, weary; best pulled out by its roots and flung on the scrapheap. Bring back Weodmonað, I say. It works, it fits. And ditch August once and for all - those Romans and their empire have had quite enough airtime.