Things are changing. The weather is starting to improve, the nights are getting longer and we’re all starting to get a little carried away. Ear muffs and winter scarfs have been swapped for fedoras and flower tiaras, we’ve started hiring hot tubs, and we’re complaining about how hot it is. The pinnacle of the calendar year is rapidly approaching: summer. It’s the time of year that we adore the most.
But we can’t really handle a summer, can we? It’s like we’ve looked down at some delicious Soleros in ASDA and turned around to realise we are lost in the supermarket for a few months. From mid-March onwards, we eagerly sit in grey-skied beer gardens sipping summer ciders. Rounds of pubgolf tee-off at Wetherspoons’ opening time. Endomorphic, shirtless dads stroll round with an attire of cream shorts, sandals and high socks, tanking up on pints of John Smith’s. We take tumbles through plastic tables at back garden BBQs. Mothers drink Australian Shiraz in the garden, then fall asleep halfway through Coronation Street. We retrieve the packet of Walkers Sensations out the cupboard that was purchased for the preceding Christmas. We indulge in our love for reggae music by blaring Bob Marley’s greatest hits CD through our garden stereos. We go to Thorpe Park, complain about the queues and we make an enraged squint at Claire-Balding-dressed mothers who have paid for priority. We eat our evening meal in the back garden because, well, we start feeling so damned exotic.
Social media changes like the seasons, too. Full advantage is taken of our smartphone applications to absolutely labour the point that it’s summer. We have to. Some folk mightn’t not know. You know, the ones that live in caves and under rocks. Pictures of a mid-afternoon Bulmer’s, shots of sunglasses on garden tables, and images of Dad burning sausages on the £300 BBQ grill he’s just splashed out on. When/if the heatwave arrives, we upload pictures of Mr Blobby-pink sunburn like it’s some sort of an achievement: “I’ve only been in the sun 35 minutes, oops!” We go over the top in summer, but it’s totally necessary – it only happens once a year (if we are lucky). But regardless we do have a false expectation that probably leaves us in a slightly sullen state, come September. It’s not just the bipolar British weather, it’s also our mind set.
Every single year, we set our hopes up for a magical summer – a time of year that we anticipate from January and thereafter. It doesn’t matter if your cat died in the winter because everything is just peak when the sun arrives. We have a naive attitude that summer is some sort of uncle that pats us on the back and says “everything will be okay, kid”. To a certain extent that’s true – it’s scientifically proven that our mental wellbeing is far healthier in the summer months – but we should probably stop setting the bar so ridiculously high. This actually dates back as far as our youth.
Recall the days of the 6 weeks holidays in primary school. Everyone has most likely set up a ‘Lemonade Stand’ trying to flog individual cups Schweppes lemonade to street that has a footfall of 2 per hour. Or established a ‘Car Wash Enterprise’, then realised that £5 divided by 3 of you and your pals isn’t really feasible for 2 and half hours work on your neighbours Citroën. As you’ve matured into your teenage years you’ve probably expected to be sitting in the park watching the sun go down with your crush next to you like some scene from 90210. If you live in city suburbs or rural areas, then you have dreamt about cruising in a convertible with your mates when you turned 17. We have all been guilty of building up a narrative that we will appear at house parties in summer boat houses consisting of red cups, Sum 41 and Toga costumes. In recent years society has started attending British festivals dressed like it’s Coachella.
We create a totally false interpretation of a British summer. We anticipate summer through a pair of rose tinted Clubmastser Ray Bans. A British summer is truly brilliant if we stop trying to live up to this fraudulent concept of how we should live it.
When you were younger (and the lemonade stand didn’t really take off), what did you do? Let me enlighten you. Back garden Wrestle Mania on trampolines. Water fights ending in tears. We shot each other with potato guns. We transformed our Apollo Mountain bikes into Suzuki Hayabusa’s with a Coca cola can wedged down the back wheel. Have you ever watched a sun set with your teenage crush? Nah didn’t think so. As you turned 17, there was no convertible to cruise about in. You may have been granted the keys to your Mums hardtop ’03-plate Corsa, and maybe you did go actually cruising. But with your mates, the cruising would consist of going no further than your local McDonalds drive thru and trying to play 50 Cent through an inadequate aux cable. There are no summer parties in boat houses and our festivals are a muddy far cry from Coachella.
All that said, back garden Wrestle Mania and Motorbike Mountain bikes define a childhood. The British realities of the California summer lead to slight disappointment, but at the end of it all we all love the commotion over summer because it’s so Britishly shit, its actually rather good.
Words By Aaron Spencer