The summer of 2018 - Halcyon days

What a summer it’s been. What a great joy the long, uninterrupted periods of Costa weather were. But, like all pleasures, there is a price to pay — and like many a holiday credit card bill, its extent is not yet known.

A months-long drought brought almost unprecedented challenges for farmers, challenges that will have a real

impact in farmyards and on supermarket food aisles for many months to come.

That drought also showed how enriched our waterways have become because of pollution, primarily farm pollution. Whether that sobering impact is enough to, at long last, make us take a realistic position on climate change remains an open question.

However, even in a society where challenge is long-fingered and catastrophe barely contemplated it seems unimaginable that the stresses brought by days on end of temperatures in the 30s would not lead to even a modest shift in thinking.

Despite that, the school bags are calling from the hall and the halcyon days of summer 2018 will soon be a memory — but what a warm, cheering memory they will be.