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.

The butterfly effect

Taking advantage of the opportunity to wander outside without the precaution of donning wellies, coat and snorkel this weekend, I made the most of the unexpected good weather by lounging in the garden and monitoring the conflict between torpor and my desire for a cold beer.

As afternoon turns into evening, somebody at a flight control desk somewhere flips a switch and, thanks to a change in flight plans and runway approaches, or possibly just for variety, the patch of sky over my head is filled not just with darting swifts but with the occasional jet aeroplane, toiling across the blue.

The appearance of these jets is always preceded or followed by a gentle wind of passing. This is not, I am sure, imagination - hot weather means that I have perfected the art of sitting perfectly still. When a 747 goes past, I can see the effect of the wind as well as feel it myself.

It makes you wonder what violence is being done to the air so that something so far away (luckily they are always high by the time they pass) can have such an effect.

Tropical Downpour? Call Al Gore!

Surrey has been experiencing what Government scaremongers are pleased to call ‘an extreme weather event’, the rest of us call rain and I call ‘a f**king downpour’. You know that scene when Gene Kelley stands under that downspout during the wonderful ‘singing in the rain’ sequence from the eponymous film (gay test: worried your son likes musicals more than hunting? Show him ‘singing in the rain’ and ask him his opinion. If he rates it as anything less than ‘fantastic’, shoot him – better a poof than somebody with no taste, as my Uncle Janice used to say), it was just like that. Gutters overflowed and you could see the rain sheeting off the roof tiles.

We got about a weeks’ rain in ten minutes. The reaction to this is a useful measure of where you are on the civilization scale. If your thoughts run along the lines of ‘This will do the grazing in the lower paddock no end of good’, then essentially, you don’t have to worry. If you think ‘shit, that sounds like a mud slide – I wonder if my hut wall will hold it back?’ – then you should really look to moving to high ground and a first world country with an economy that’s not based on anything you put in a mug and stir.

Most of us probably fall somewhere in between (I was worried about my recently planted tomato plants on my allotment), but all of us are, I hope, agreed on one thing, getting caught in the rain leading to jumping about and grinning only happens in Hollywood films written, and acted, by people so stoned off their tits that the most common form of dampness they experience is when they pee themselves when high and don’t notice until they come to on the floor of their home if they are lucky or the cell they now share with ‘Bubba’ if they are not.

So while I can admire the power of nature, I’m of an age now where the sensation of wet clothing sticking to my body is like that moment when you brush up against a wet shower curtain and it sticks to you – but all over. That scene in the shower in Psycho – those screams were real, Hitch pushed a wet clammy shower curtain up against Janet Leigh again and again and again. The only good time for the heavens to open is when somebody suggests returning to the office after this lunchtime pint, or when the commentator says ‘England surely hoping that something happens here that will force the draw.’