Drinking in the dark

What, apart from the temperature of the rain, differentiates summer in England from winter in England? One answer is possibly the increase in al-fresco drinking. Many alcoholic beverages seem designed to be consumed outdoors, this is possibly a result of their being adopted to make certain summer sporting events, notably tennis, bearable and to make certain other sports, such as cricket, even more enjoyable over a sustained period of spectating and drinking (drinking from eleven in the morning to seven in the evening over a five day period may be a ‘binge’ to the nanny state, but to anyone sitting watching a test match, it’s simply supporting your country). It also makes that other summer pursuit, talking to people about roadworks at barbeques, achievable.

Warm evenings mean that one is able to stay out and up when the sun has gone down. This means that one can finally press one’s collection of garden lighting, scented candles and so on into service, having the twin effect of giving enough light to drink by and drawing off any mosquitoes that have a taste for 20% proof O Negative.

After dark, any garden becomes a secret garden, and nothing adds a warm rosy glow like candlelight and booze. On a clear night one can sit underneath a canopy of stars (or, if you live in the city, a sort of fuzzy orange glow), fumbling for the last of the beer bottles swimming in the tub of tepid water that used to be a tub of ice like a poacher ticking trout.

Al fresco drinking also means that you can finally use that garden furniture that, hitherto, has either been hidden under the snow or stuck in the shed. Warning: a combination of comfortable garden furniture and making use of a blanket to eek out a few more minutes of nocturnal imbibing can result in you waking up with a start at three in the morning to be confronted by, depending on where you live, a puzzled fox or inquisitive deer.

G&P disclaimer on al-fresco drinking: if you drink cold white wine on a hot day while sat in an open space listening to songs in a foreign language, you are middle class. If you are drinking warm cider from a plastic bottle on a park bench listening to your companion muttering in an accent so thick it has actually crossed a linguistic line and become another language, you need to get up, get a bath and sort yourself out. Alternatively you are a teenager and you need to stop wearing so much eyeliner, stop texting and stop looking so bloody sullen.