Now that the heatwave has officially ended, something that I decided quite firmly while stood shivering under a marquee at the weekend and rain lashing down either side, I felt it appropriate to write about the summer that we have had.
For once in certainly my life and I am sure many of my readers too (unless you’re old enough to remember summer of 1976 as people keep telling me) the summer weather in England during 2018 has been beautiful.
The sun has constantly been shining, no rain in sight and you have been able to count on shorts and a t-shirt or a pretty summer dress to last you throughout the day rather than having to change to accommodate the four seasons in 24 hours that we usually experience.
Even when the school holidays began back at the end of July the weather didn’t change to the wetness that usually comes. No, the sunshine and heat remained and people were known to be going abroad to cool down not to find some heat and get a tan.
This wouldn’t be a Brit writing a blog post about the glorious summer that we’ve had without bringing in the negatives so that is what I am about to do. Aside from the serious danger that it has caused to wildlife and communities with an uncountable amount of field fires on farms and in woodlands, a major downer has been, in my opinion, how the Brits themselves have coped.
We can’t ever just be happy can we, always having to moan particularly about the weather. You had the ‘I’m too hot’ folk, the ‘I hate the sun’ people and the ‘I hate to moan, but…’ brigade wherever you went.
Some would say ‘it’s alright if you don’t have to do anything’ until they didn’t have to do anything and then that would be awful too. Even the drinkers among us were complaining because supermarkets had run out of lemonade for Pimms and tonic for the G & T’s – total and utter disaster.
Dogs were getting bored missing out on walk after walk because it was cruel to take them out in the heat. Towns were full of murmuring complaints about the temperature and outside the entrance to beer gardens was where these moans escalated due to the fact that there were never any seats.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all negative and I have spoken to people who have loved the weather too and those who couldn’t get to the beach quick enough. But then the beach fiasco had a bad picture painted from the media with the mess that some were left in with litter filling the entire expanse.
I personally have loved every minute of the weather that we have had an I have been working in it the entire time. Though we do have air conditioning so whether that counts or not I can’t say.
Of course I agree that the fires are horrific, the threat on nature has been awful and the state of Southend beach that I saw pictured was in no way excusable.
However, I can’t get enough of having a summer wardrobe and using it in our home country, every night being the perfect weather for an ice cold alcoholic beverage and BBQ’s on repeat.
Bring on next year I say, it’s a long old winter.