{"id":6860,"date":"2019-09-03T11:41:17","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T11:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=6860"},"modified":"2019-09-03T11:41:19","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T11:41:19","slug":"summers-lease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=6860","title":{"rendered":"Summer’s lease"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I have been revelling in the hot weather \u2013 I love it! Yea,\nit was foretold at my birth that I would be a sunseeker, by which I mean that\naccording to my mother it was so hot on the day I was born that you could fry\nan egg on the tarmac at Heathrow Airport (though I don\u2019t know if anyone was\nactually trying this).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summer is without a doubt my favourite season, and I\u2019m sorry\nto see it slipping away. As a Leo born in August, as far as I\u2019m concerned\nsummer isn\u2019t allowed to end until well into September, which is why I find it\ndeeply shocking that children in Scotland have to go back to school in August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is an emotional, completely unscientific view, not upheld by world authorities on the matter. A gardening column assured me two weeks ago that summer was over, and in Down the Bright Stream<\/em>, a children\u2019s book I was entranced by in my wistful floaty hippy period (I still have the hardback given me by my fellow dames) the mysterious author BB describes mid-July as having \u2018\u2026 a strong hint of late summer\u2026 the buttercups had gone, and the elder with them, no longer did their sweet smell make the night air heavy.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I find autumn depressing. As it gets cold and dark I want to\ngather my chicks around me, but needless to say the fully grown lads in question\nwould find the idea laughable. Spring is even worse: I detest the change to\nBritish Summer Time, with light but bleak evenings you\u2019d be better off closing\nthe curtains on, and always being cold because you\u2019ve overestimated the\ntemperature. Winter\u2019s fine \u2013 you know it\u2019s going to be cold so you just rug up\nwarmly and get on with it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summer is when you can finally relax \u2013 there\u2019s no longer any need to go round with your head down and your shoulders hunched, braced against the cold. You can feel expansive, open ready for anything. As readers of these pages will know, I bow to no man in my love of a cardie<\/a>, but the sweet spot of summer hasn\u2019t been achieved until you don\u2019t even need to take one with you as an insurance policy when you go out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No film has captured the promise of a summer evening better than Sideways<\/em>, when our wine-loving heroes emerge from their hotel into the sunshine of a Californian evening, newly showered and changed, and stroll off down the dusty road towards exciting encounters with untried vintages and \u2013 who knows? \u2013 new friends of the opposite persuasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Likewise, no song has captured the airy languor of summer better than the Isley Brothers\u2019 ‘Summer Breeze<\/a>‘. Alternating plangent strings and flowing vocals, it instantly evokes the ease and optimism of summer. Admittedly one of the lyrics now jars a bit (the one about coming home from a hard day\u2019s work and she\u2019s there without a care in the world and the food cookin\u2019), but who can resist \u2018Summer breeze makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind\u2019? (What do you mean, you haven\u2019t got any jasmine in your mind?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And books \u2013 somehow you remember books you read during the summer differently from the ones read at other times of the year. I spent a summer reading The Lord of the Rings<\/em> and the Gormenghast<\/em> trilogy back to back, and didn\u2019t really re-enter the real world until I\u2019d read the last page. I\u2019m sure it would have been different if I hadn\u2019t been reading them in dappled parks and on sunny sofas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I can no longer ignore the crisp edges to the leaves,\nand my vain attempts to get a few more blooms out of my bedraggled roses. It\u2019s\nover. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You could fry an egg on the tarmac at Heathrow<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,67,182,55,171,60],"tags":[225,224],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6860"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6860"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6877,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6860\/revisions\/6877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}