Where did summer go?

They say the Brits live for their holidays and who can blame us when summer passes by with the blink of an eye. Each year we're on tenterhooks wondering what kind of summer we'll have and each year if we're lucky we get 30 days of so-called heat wave weather - i.e. 25-27°celsius but not continuous mind you.

When those rare days come, the media gets into frenzy with statistics about how many years it has been since the last heat wave and this is followed by the overly-obvious health and safety warnings telling people to make sure they carry water with them. It’s a miracle people in the Caribbean and other tropical countries aren’t dropping off every second from dehydration.

The British public for their part are happy to strip down to the bare minimum at the first sighting of the sun…..such is the level of sun starvation in this country.

May usually starts off well enough with a few warm days which make the news headlines and are billed as ‘the hottest it’s been this time of the year for the past decade/century/millennium.

June is often the most promising with atleast a week or two of continuous sunshine – in other words decent summer weather. We’re so grateful that even when it starts raining 14 days later, we comment that ‘we’ve had a good summer’.

July which should be the peak of summer ends up being a bit of a washout – we turn into confused idiots not quite knowing what to wear, the mornings are dull grey and quite cold and by the afternoon we’re cursing ourselves for having worn those 50 denier tights which seemed like such a good idea as the cold wind battered us on the way to the office.

Finally August we’re told by the weather forecasters (who may as well be called weather psychics as they are as accurate as Mystic Meg) will see a return of the hot weather even a heat wave or two. And so we wait….and wait…week one…grey and rainy…not particularly cold but certainly not warm, week two – drizzly wet weather forcing us to bring out the spring jackets….then we hope it will all change in time for the bank holiday weekend, we pray that Mr Sunshine will make a comeback bigger than 80s shoulder pads……and go ahead with our plans for the kiddie picnic and family barbecue. Of course, as with each year the chances of a sunny end of August are slim to say the least…..especially as August bank holiday has become synonymous with rain. So there ends our last hope of decent summer weather.

Finally September comes round and we know it’s all over and we want to weep into our scarves. It wouldn’t be so bad if we had had three months of predictable summer weather but what makes it a real b**** and why we resort to flicking through the Mediterranean holiday brochures, is that summer has just passed us by…unceremoniously. Fortunately for us the South of France, Spain, Greece and Italy are a hop, skip and a jump away so we can rest assured that our strappy dresses and bikinis which still have their tags on, will get a viewing at last and for longer than just a few pathetic hours of sunshine which in short is what charaterizes British summer.