“A storm is creeping across the horizon like a black beast”
“Just because someone killed the sun 23 summers back, and it’s pissing down, does not mean summer hasn’t arrived,” I think, loading eight boxes of firelighters into my trolley.
“There are all sorts of other signifiers,” I remind myself, flinging in six boxes of matches after them, “besides the sun, to gladden the heart and help you remember what season currently prevails.”
“For example,” I think, “any day now, the Stitchwort flowers will suddenly appear in amongst the bluebells in the ditches, and it will look like someone got up in the night and flung handfuls of tiny white stars at them.”
I look past the checkouts through the window, beyond which it appears December is fomenting, “which proves that we are in fact, enjoying summer”.
I wander down the wine aisle. It is full of summery whites, such as, “The Beach House” Pinot Grigio, which is “laid back, chilled, white sands, seashells, breeze, serene sunshine, slow, enjoy”.
I clunk Beach House into the trolley; it might help tonight, when temperatures drop to six degrees, and rain, with gale force winds, spreads to all parts of the country, causing localised flooding.
“And my bulbs under the window sills are sprouting vigorous green foliage,” I persevere, “which means I will see my pink dahlias in August again!”
I think of my dahlias — so big, fat, spiky, and bonkers-looking that Quentin Blake might have drawn them. “Of course it is summer,” I tell myself.
I push my trolley into the pyjama section.
“I mean, what is finding a bat,” I ask myself, fondling slipper socks, “wings folded and upside down, trembling in the bedroom window sash this morning, if it’s not a sign of summer?”
“And what about the crows,” I chivvy myself, throwing two pairs of slipper-socks into my trolley, “which have bested the chimney cowl yet again and are now nesting halfway-down the chimney?”
“What could be more definitively seasonal than fledgling birds?” I consider, thinking of the stocky crow-babies that will soon start plopping one by one into the empty grate, to hop and squawk around the sitting room, in their customary fashion, like they are drunk.
Re-calibrating my relationship with summer becomes more difficult when I’m loading groceries into the boot of the car; a storm is creeping across the horizon like a black beast, the rain has teeth, and I am wearing a summer dress because it is summer.
Driving home, I begin compiling a list of a summer signifiers besides the sun, which gladden the heart and help me remember what season currently prevails:
1. The lawn mower is being serviced.
2. I am Googling Puglia nightly.
3. I’ve found perverse satisfaction in moving the cursor backwards and forwards across Met Eireann five-day weather forecast graph, and discussing findings.
4. There is a horse in our back field.
5. I left the front door open on purpose last week.
6. I’ve survived three nights without a hot water bottle.
7. My brother-in-law has started phoning from Suffolk to tell me it’s 20 degrees.
AT THE local creamery I get out of the car and fill up the petrol tank — one hand on the pump, the other clutching the hem of my dress so as to prevent the wind from hula-hooping it around my waist, like it did last Friday in the market.
A local farmer climbs down out of his tractor. He looks at the sky and then at me.
“Chrisht,” he says, “you wouldn’t put your wife out in that.”
He walks past me.
“Chrisht,” he says, shaking his head with unsurprised disgust, “‘tis f*cking septic.”
“And that,” I think, “is number eight.”
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