Month: August 2022

…but the Beach ain’t one.

My colleague at work came into the office yesterday to declare that the workshop was “literally boiling”. It wasn’t of course, any more than he was “literally dead from the heat” when he came in to tell us so an hour later – but in the sense that it was very hot yesterday, is very hot today, and (spoiler alert) will be very hot again tomorrow, he was right.

This sort of temperature always serves to highlight that there are two types of people – those who like it and those who don’t. True, that could be said of almost anything from the kumquat to the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, but the difference seems particularly acute when it comes to hot weather.

I’m not, without wanting to sound too much like a prude, madly keen on seeing a lot of flesh out on public display (that’s probably why I don’t even allow a full-length mirror in the bedroom) but during this morning’s trip into town there was, it must be said, an awful lot of it on show. Sadly the word ‘awful’ is very much applicable there.

I’m not a fan of barbeques either which, like beer bellies and knees also appear out of nowhere the instant hot weather kicks in. Call me an old-fashioned hater of food poisoning, I’ve just never eaten anything that was enhanced by being served either still-pink or charred to a cinder, and it’s never been redeemed by the offer to half-bury it in onions either. If I’m honest I don’t really think, deep down, with our grand history of Agas and Gas-Stoves, that the Brits are made for Barbeques – and I’m certain the increase in them during my lifetime is far more to do with Australian soap operas than it is any change in the climate.

And then there’s the beach.

In and of itself, it’s OK – but the problem is, the very time when the weather suggests it would be great to go to the beach is exactly when the very same suggestion occurs to everybody else. Finding a peaceful bit of real-estate on the beach is next to impossible on such occasions, and there’s no obvious enjoyment to be had from walking barefoot across shingle or from sitting on burning-hot sand. And then there’s the aftermath when for days after, in some kind of vague homage to Marilyn Monroe, you end up finding sand in places you didn’t even realise you had places.

That’s not to say I’ve never been to the beach, obviously. My hazy memories of what I believe we’re all now contractually-obliged to call “the long hot summer of 1976” are of going to the beach. Maybe, living nearby, we went EVERY Summer and I’m just too young to remember; or perhaps it really was “the long hot summer” that prompted it. Either way, I seem to think we went to the beach A LOT that year, and certainly that was when I first saw practiced what has sadly become a dying art in the intervening decades – namely tying a knot in each corner of your hankie and using it as a sun hat. But now that the urge to build sandcastles or collect seaweed has left me, I kind of think I’m done with beaches.

Not that I want to sound like a killjoy (although, if not already sailed, I accept that the ship is literally slipping from its moorings as I type). I wouldn’t want anybody to picture me as hunkering down in a darkened room praying for rain. I’ve been out with the dogs and the lawnmower and the laundry today. But only in the morning. This afternoon (which at time of arriving is about two hundred minutes in) is not, for me, a time to light the BBQ, or head to the coast, or even (heaven forbid!) to get my legs out.

In other words, to go back to my original point, there are those who like the hot weather and those who don’t. And rightly or wrongly, and as has probably become very apparent, I don’t.

What a proper little ray of sunshine I am!