Love Sunshine

It's old father sun's day.

It's that time again, the midsummer solstice, which strides up to us with wearisome predictability. Some perversity in the cosmos always decrees that the sun is elsewhere when he should be taking a bow for his longest performance. It means, of course, after this it's all down hill. The nights will start drawing in soon, and before we know it, the ads will start selling Christmas. Yes, I'm back, to bring a little sunshine into everyones lives.

This day presents the opportunity to assess the summer so far, and issue a mid-term appraisal. Now, let me see... It struck me the other day that either I'm softening along with my brain, or this summer hasn't been that bad so far. That bad being another way of saying anything like the last 2. It's all relative, I suppose. A friend who I hadn't seen for a while greeted me the other day with 'you must be pretty miffed with the lousy summer'. And there I was secretly thinking it had been OK. Not wonderful. It's not a proper summer for me until I hear the phrase 'hosepipe ban'. But we have to be thankful for small mercies in this climate, what with the solar credit crunch 'an all. I can say this much for summer 09 so far, Its heart is in the right place. It has, as Wilde once said of nature in general, good intentions. But has difficulty carrying them out. It just needs a bit of encouragement, to get back into its scorcher stride. So, instead of moaning, I'll look on the bright side, and say thank you. Thank you sun, for a miracle of a sunny dry bank holiday in May. Thank you for some good weekends (we'll turn a blind eye to the weeks in between). And thank you for not allowing it to rain that much. We really missed you the last 2 years, and we can see that your trying your best. Three cheers for the sun, and let's have a bloody good scorcher. Huzzah.

BTW, regulars of my romance blog venture might be amused to know I'm giving a talk about my book at Shakespeare & Co in Paris tomorrow. I'm hoping that a long lost lover will turn up, sing me her songs and sweep me off my feet. I'll let you know if it happens... TTFN.