The summer rolls on. While the south enjoys hot temperatures, it’s been more moderate here. Very much the regular sunshine and showers of my youth. Hard to believe it’s 50 years since the record breaking summer of ‘76. It was so hot. The roads melted and I remember we’d roll pieces of tarmac into balls and throw them at each other. Though we’re much further north here so it was much less dramatic history suggests. That’s how I like it. Anything above 25 ot the mid 70s and I get incapacitated by the heat which is ironic since we spent so much time in Las Vegas and California. But then we did get heatstroke in Vegas in a classic mad dog and Englishmen sort of way as we went walking in the 120 degree heatwave which put the 80 degree heat of the summer of ‘76 in perspective. The thing is, from my British perspective, being hot means sweating but in 120 degrees all your sweat evaporates so counterintuitively you don’t have one of the usual markers for being hot.
No one else was stupid enough to be out in it or were beside the pool, we just thought we’d power through it until we got lightheaded and couldn’t feel our feet on the ground. It was spacey like being stoned but not pleasurable. On that trip we were in a Harley Davidson restaurant when Obama was declared President and it was totally ignored. This major event happened and you’d never have known. That seemed really odd to us at the time. But perhaps less so now.
Anyway the decent weather has meant Dawn can get on painting the studio inside and out. A big task considering its size. The wild flower grass rectangles at the front are coming on and we’ve started eating kale already, courgettes will be next. Very much just busking it just now, long term we’ll plant trees and shrubs, so everything is a bit temporary but it's all starting to take shape slowly.
Kids broke up for the summer here on Thursday. That last day before the summer holidays stands out in my memory because it was such a unique day and the six week holidays spread out in front of you. It seemed so long and so full of potential.You could wear normal clothes and that seemed so transgressional somehow.
And you could bring games in though I never did largely because I didn’t have any that could be played by a group being a solitary sort of kid. My fun largely revolved around researching and buying albums and playing Subbuteo cricket and ‘Owzat. I completed a whole Championship three summers in a row with that alone. Just two dice one with a 1-6 on and another with potential dismissals on. Simple but effective at gripping an imaginative teenager. I used to create score cards and assiduously fill them in, playing every day of the summer. I suppose it was our generation's equal of computer games. I was all about creating alternate realities where I was God, as kids for whom actual reality is sub optimal tend to do.
Nothing like that is planned this summer but I promise we’ll get a raft of new designs done in the near future.
