I love summer. Absolutely, completely love it. I love to feel the air and the sun on my skin, I love the feel of damp morning grass under my bare feet. I love how sounds carry on the warm air; children playing in the paddling pool in the park next door, hints of radio drifting from someone’s shed, the clinking of cutlery as lunch is prepared, al fresco, in one of the neighbouring houses, the pop of a cork and the giggles that go with it.
I love that summer days seem endless; even after a siesta the day has plenty 
enough left to stretch into a beautiful, long, languid evening. Summer is when I feel most me. Summer is when I feel optimistic and happy from the moment I wake up to the moment I reluctantly close my eyes on another perfect day. Summer is about tranquility and life and love and being carefree once again…..
Summers are for going to the south of France for a week and accidentally staying for 2 months because of a boy with dusky, olive skin and a mop of hair bleached blonde by the sun and sea. Summers are for holding hands and waiting patiently for that first kiss……a kiss tinged with the taste of the sea….. In the summer sun there is no need to hurry anything, no need to wear shoes or be encumbered by layers of clothes…..no need to brush the sea salt out of one’s hair, no need to look at the clock. In the heat and the sun time stops.
A peace descends on the kitchen garden; all the hard work was done in the spring…all the hurrying and dashing…all the sowing and pricking, the transplanting and the tying and staking…it has all been done. And now……now the summer is here and the air is thick with sticky stillness; all around me is stillness. I am alone….but for the insects and even they seem to be going more slowly…..the honey bees linger, drunk on nectar, the butterflies, like giddy girls on the pier, occasionally flash their brightly coloured knickers. I, too, become more still. This is the time for sitting……for daydreaming……..for moments of ennui. For remembering. A la recherche du temps perdu. It is a time for simply being. I spend hours and hours and hours in the garden doing absolutely nothing….and I long to do it all again tomorrow.
Only when there is no light left to see by do I think about going home. And later, when I lay on my bed, drifting off, I can smell the sun on my skin and the breeze in my hair…… and my mind becomes as peaceful as my garden and all my memories flood back….
Oh summer! I am already nostalgic for you.
