I
can now state, without doubt, mockery or deceit, that summer has
finally arrived. Gone is the winter, gone is the spring. Now is the
time of the sun, although he is doing a very good impression of
clouds and rain at the minute. A versatile chap, that sun, I wonder
what his Sean Connery’s like. Yes, it may not seem like the
festival of tan and ice cream that everyone desires, mostly because
you can’t bronze in hail and it’s difficult to enjoy a frozen
treat with frozen teats, but the summer is definitely here. I say
this because I have spent the last couple of weeks with splendidly
itchy eyes, a nose that dreams of being a free flowing stream, and
tissue paper lodged in most of my facial orifices. Ah, the summer,
when that great ball of fire burns brightly behind a wall of water,
when one is woken early and kept up late, and when I look even less
attractive than usual. Yeah, that’s right, laugh it up.
It’s
not that I don’t like the season of barbecues and factor 50, it’s
just that ones enjoyment of any activity, or annual segment, is
degraded by the presence of mucus and saliva smeared across ones
face, even if it is ones own. The most irritating part of the whole
arrangement is that this year the drugs don’t seem to be working. I
refer, of course, to your bog standard anti histamines rather than
crack or skag or meth amphetamine, not because I have any knowledge
as to whether they are effective treatments, but because they are
well out of my price range for nose blocking, face un-puffers. It is
a particularly cruel affliction, hay fever, in that you awake to
beautiful, golden sunshine pouring through your window, feel
invigorated by the sense of possibility this new, dry world instills
in you, dress merrily in your coolest (function, not street cred)
clothes, and fling the door open with gay abandon, only to have the
back of your eyes clawed at by a tiny, invisible ferret, and gallons
of thick, stringy gloop released from your sinuses. It takes the
shine off Frisbee and a Cornetto.
While
I’m on about it, summer’s a bastard for insects that sting and
bite as well. I seem to be particularly delicious to the bitey ones,
they nibble away – usually just around the sock line – until my
skin and flesh get all red and swollen. This adds to the already
dangerous potency of my sexual appeal. I’d be beating them away
like flies if it wasn’t for the constant need to actually be
beating away all the bloody flies. Wasps are fuckers, aren’t they.
With their black and yellow bands of death, hurtling towards you and
your Calippo like some sort of tiny, pointy arsed cunt. They’re
everywhere too, in large intimidating groups, just waiting for a
picnic or kids party to ruin. I’d ban them. I would. I’d ban them
and lock them all away in tiny death camps, then I’d squash them
one by one, in front of their brethren. I would. Nah, fuck ’em. I
definitely would.
But
I don’t dislike the summer, for all its faults it still has the
lure of being the least grey, cold and wet period during the year.
The ladies tend to wear less, or floatier, clothing (something that
is a visual curse as often as a trouser shrinking blessing), peoples
spirits are generally higher, and there is a leaning towards a more
social, chatty, eating, drinky kind of a time. Which is pleasant. The
minor drawback to this is that there are an awful lot of people
about. Burnt, red, irritable, pissed, smelly, stupid, stupid people.
Stupider than on any other given occasion. Show us a bit of sun and
we rub ourselves in goose fat, wrap ourselves in tin foil and sit in
the sizzling heat for as long as it takes to roast. Season, and then
serve. It’s remarkably silly behaviour, there’s no need to cook
yourself and you don’t look any better – you look like an idiot.
Then there’s those people who tan so well they end up looking like
Morph, and truly, it’s no improvement on Walking Crackling. It’s
there to be enjoyed, yes – but I enjoy Microwave chips, and I don’t
feel the need to continuously heat them at groin height until my
testicles are melon sized wastelands. Everything in good measure.
Summer
then. It’s good, if a little scratchy and sniffy and
surrounded-by-lobster-peopley. A bit more sunny and a little less
downpour would be nice, especially as they do seem to put an awful
lot of sport on the television in June and July, and the floods are
making it somewhat difficult to go outside, thus avoiding the ball
kicking, jumping and running. Don’t put it on the television, and
if you must, don’t take everything else that’s not shite off.
That’s just cruel, that. I’m not a wasp, you monsters.
0 Comments