Summer Nostalgia

‘Aaah, summer – that long anticipated stretch of lazy, lingering days, free of responsibility and rife with possibility.’ – Darell Hammond.

The National Topic of Conversation

The national topic of conversation in the UK is the weather.

Waiting for your change from a shop assistant? Mention how cold and grey it is today. Got a meeting in work with people you don’t know well? Talk about how wet it has been for the past three months and joke that we will soon need to start building an ark. Struggling with the small talk on a first date? Comment on the fact that we don’t seem to be having a summer at all this year. Ponder on whether or not it might be to do with climate change. If that sparks a conversation, it’s been a win-win situation (no more awkward silences!). If nothing comes of these observations, it’s probably not meant to be. Start swiping on Tinder again.

What really gets us going is the Great British Summer. Or lack of. Summer in the UK is often fleeting. What vestiges we get we grab tightly and hold onto vehemently. We’re afraid to let go even as the first fat, heavy drops of rain begin to fall again.

The Nostalgia of Summer

Summer is the echo of laughter. It’s indistinct chatter from a nearby beer garden, rising like heat from soil at the end of a long hot day. A waft of smoke on the air, distinctive and tantalising. The scent of grilled meat charred and caught around the edges. It is the catch of a good song, blasting from speakers as you pass a row of houses. Basement Jaxx ‘well wake up baby, you’re so totally deluded…‘.

We like to be nostalgic about summers past. Often, we muse about the fact that ‘when we were young, summers were never this wet and we always got a decent month of sunshine’. We reminisce about our childhood summers spent swimming in lakes and rivers, stained the colour of tea by the peat. Dive-bombs into an icy shock of water. We indulge ourselves in memories of idyllic picnics under wide-spreading shady trees, an assortment of delicious foods arrayed on a checked blanket.

Ice-creams dripping down our arms, licking the sticky remnants off our hands, blissful. Warm, salty sea breezes tugging at our hair and cooling our skin as we emerge from the cornflower sea and curl our toes into the hot sand. The long dusty days, a drawn-out twilight, light seeping oh-so-slowly from the sky. Candy floss clouds and pastel colours streak the horizon. The short, hot, restless nights, without a breath of air. The room so stuffy we toss and turn, unable to get comfortable until dawn comes, promising another sizzling day ahead.

A Season of Freedom

During childhood, summer is the season of freedom. Six weeks away from school bells, uniforms, packed lunches, buses, timetables, exams, Maths… It feels like a lifetime. The days go by in a haze, melting into one another. We never remember the rainy ones. The ones we do remember were filled with sunshine. The water sparkled and the grass blew tall and green and we got treats for tea.

In reality, the summers past can’t all have been long, hot and full of sunshine. Our memories stretch the truth. We distort and warp our recollections of our younger years and rose-tint them. Of course, there must have been rainy days. However, we remember these more vividly in the present, the ones we moan about now. The endless drizzle, an autumnal chill, skies the colour of dishwater. As adults, we seem to remember the grey days more than the sunny ones. We never recall the last proper sunny day, only the last time that it rained.

Changing Perspectives

I wonder if it is our perspective on life that changes. Our outlook becoming less rosy and more realistic as we move into adulthood and then on through life. We become more cynical and jaded with the world. Gone are the carefree, innocent conversation of our youth. We recount stories about our nightmare commutes on the tube and discuss world politics. The talk turns to grown up stuff like washing machines and home decorating. Our childhood is behind us, and so too are the summers that were long, hot and full of sunshine.

Grab what you can of the sunshine and be a child again, albeit briefly. Make the most of the dog days, as summer fades almost imperceptibly into autumn. All too soon, the leaves will be on the turn. The days will be growing noticeably shorter once more. The first chills of a new season will have you reaching for your jacket in the mornings. So hold on now… To the sun and to the child inside you. It’ll be all change again before you know it.

NB: These photos may not all be the best quality, but just looking at them makes me think of summer days past and they make me instantly happier!

Read more of my older posts in my Archives. These are some of the oldest posts on my blog, from before my days of travel. This is where it all began!