stevieqgray

A reminder what summers in this country used to be like...

the smell of spoilt fruit and veg after the market's cleared away;
sweat-stained vests, scorched lawns, sunburnt shoulders;
hosepipe bans [even though the river burst its banks in May and flooded the town];
punch-ups, anti-clamactic, on sweating pavements outside pubs at kicking-out time;
baked air on empty buses winding through quiet, odd-named villages;
the noise of televisions, turned up loud for deaf pensioners, spilling out of opened windows of terraced houses;
Henman not winning Wimbledon again;
the sweet-dust smell when it rains after a hot, dry spell, and the way it feels like a world that's been holding its breath has finally exhaled;
cars, bumper-to-bumper on motorways, headed for the coast, tyres all black and new-looking with melted tar;
ice cream vans stopped on housing estates, by kids with bikes and homes with hanging baskets;
smoke hanging on warm evening air;
the heat that hits you when you open the door of a car parked in the sun all day;
school exams in stifling halls;
yellow fields sighing pollen into the air to play havoc with sinuses;
mosquitoes hovering over ponds and streams, and bats swooping from under bridges at dusk;
music from stereos drifting over garden fences;
tractors crawling along country roads, too narrow to overtake on;
the way summer now is never as long or as hot as the ones you remember.

I've known 82 seasons across a kaleidoscope of nations
[some left more of a mark than others],
but this has always been the realest for me.

Perhaps that's because I somehow always knew
that somewhere, in an English summer that hadn't happened yet,
out of sight behind hazy horizons of growing up,
you were waiting.