Tag Archives: summer

And So Into Summer

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Every year, when the days start to heat up, it feels like a liberation that some strange part of me worries might never come. But it’s here now, as inevitable as any season. May turns into June with barely a second thought. The wind swings around to the south, blowing hot from foreign lands. It rises, too, tickling the tops of trees but bringing no relief to those on the ground under the scorching sun.

Field and Farmhouse

Temperatures drift inexorably towards the thirties. The gorse flowers have faded and gone, passing their torch to the buttercups in the meadows and the cow parsley that crowds every hedgerow and riverbank.

Winter and Spring have had their day. Now it is time for Summer; king of seasons, our season. It is time for deep blue skies and endless green fields. It is time for the smell of barbecues and the salty sea. It is time for the sound of parched heath underfoot and the calls of swallows in the cool evening air.

House and Brick Wall

It is time to run, and play, and swim, and laugh, and dance between the hot sand and the blazing sky.

Summer is here.

Summer Calling

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It is past midnight here, and a warm onshore breeze is just beginning to slacken. I stand barefoot between the blinking lights of the town and the endless beaches that sweep up the sea, whole again.

There’s sand in my shoes, sand in my bag and sand strewn across the carpeted floor, but it’s matched by the sand in my heart and soul that I can never leave behind.

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Home is here, beneath the blazing sun, ankle deep in salty water. Home is here, amongst the lobster-red tourists and dripping ice creams. Home is here, where barbecues cloud the sky and stars reflect upwards from the open sea.

Home is here, between a glorious Spring and the beckoning arms of a long, hot summer.

Easter’s Approach

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Not too many years ago, Easter fell early in the month of April. I spent it camping in a blizzard somewhere near Birmingham, packing in as many people as our tent would hold so that we wouldn’t freeze overnight. My choice to spend the daylight hours running around a frozen muddy field in a hakama was also, with hindsight, not the best of all possible choices.

Years have passed, and this time around, Easter falls late. The lilac trees are already in bloom, while cherry blossoms and dandelion seeds tumble in the wind.

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Even at eight in the morning, the sun is high in the sky and the mist is boiling away. Blue skies overhead promise a beautiful day, hot and cloudless, just like dozens more to come.

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It’s April, then it will be May. The holidays are here, the tourists are here to pack the beaches. Slowly but surely, Spring is becoming Summer once more.

A Farewell to Summer

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The day began with mist rolling in over the sea, but before long it turned to morning drizzle and on into a rainy afternoon; big, lazy raindrops falling in patches from the sky. Then as evening came the mist rolled in once more, cloaking everything in dampness and white. Here by the shores of the English Channel, this is how autumn begins.

Though it will return in patches over the coming month, brief flickers and shadows of July’s heat, the summer that was is now gone. It was a summer of travel and of dodging the rain, a summer of remembering the past and of making plans for the future. It held what might be my last RABIES, what may be my last summer in Galicia, and what almost certainly will be my last summer as an unmarried man.

So now, as the light dims and dies for another year, bring on harvest and Hallowe’en, bring on the howling winds and driving rain, bring on coats and inside-out umbrellas and mugs of warm cider by the fire. Soon it will be summer once more, and everything will be different.