Summertime, and the cricket is easy
Today is supposed to be the hottest day of the year so far.
It certainly feels like it. I have made sure that I have derived maximum enjoyment from it by sitting indoors in the shade, sipping cool drinks and listening to Test Match Special. Something of a cliché? Possibly, but I recall that in the hot summers of my youth, the cricket was the background to whatever else was happening. Cricket is criticised because it takes five days to play a match, but surely that’s one of the many great things about it. Doing anything properly; building a cathedral, erecting a henge, singing a German opera, takes time. Things that are less impressive – instant coffee, Pot Noodle, eating anything that is ‘fun’ sized is less satisfying.
A colleague recently asked me if we weren’t in fact seeing a return to ‘proper’ weather, like wot we ad when we were kids! They have a point. Winter actually came with snow. Real, proper fluffy white snow rather than the brown slush we’ve been putting up with that insinuates itself into your shoes and, for some science-defying reason, never melts once it’s in there!
Now we have the sort of summer that’s turning the lawns the same shade of brown as the faded poleroids that document the last time we had a summer like this. I foresee hosepipe bans and brown lawns for everyone except the Midnight Waterer who is bright enough to realise that he’s not supposed to be watering his lawn, but not bright enough to realise that somebody in authority might make the connection between a street full of sepia grass and a single lawn of emerald green.
The idea then of climate change actually being caused by nostalgia has been added to the other theories about global warming. What nostalgia will not affect is my dress sense. Judging by those same faded photographs I was a big fan of man-made fibres and spent the summer of ’76 sporting nylon tee shirts decorated with pictures of Action Man. Not a good look on a fat adult.
It certainly feels like it. I have made sure that I have derived maximum enjoyment from it by sitting indoors in the shade, sipping cool drinks and listening to Test Match Special. Something of a cliché? Possibly, but I recall that in the hot summers of my youth, the cricket was the background to whatever else was happening. Cricket is criticised because it takes five days to play a match, but surely that’s one of the many great things about it. Doing anything properly; building a cathedral, erecting a henge, singing a German opera, takes time. Things that are less impressive – instant coffee, Pot Noodle, eating anything that is ‘fun’ sized is less satisfying.
A colleague recently asked me if we weren’t in fact seeing a return to ‘proper’ weather, like wot we ad when we were kids! They have a point. Winter actually came with snow. Real, proper fluffy white snow rather than the brown slush we’ve been putting up with that insinuates itself into your shoes and, for some science-defying reason, never melts once it’s in there!
Now we have the sort of summer that’s turning the lawns the same shade of brown as the faded poleroids that document the last time we had a summer like this. I foresee hosepipe bans and brown lawns for everyone except the Midnight Waterer who is bright enough to realise that he’s not supposed to be watering his lawn, but not bright enough to realise that somebody in authority might make the connection between a street full of sepia grass and a single lawn of emerald green.
The idea then of climate change actually being caused by nostalgia has been added to the other theories about global warming. What nostalgia will not affect is my dress sense. Judging by those same faded photographs I was a big fan of man-made fibres and spent the summer of ’76 sporting nylon tee shirts decorated with pictures of Action Man. Not a good look on a fat adult.
Labels: Climate change, Cricket, Summer, Weather
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