Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Deja vu (it must be spring)

Really, I of all people should know better, but it's happened again. A few days of fine weather, a particularly enchanting evening bathed in mellow gold after a day canopied by endless blue, and even I find myself tempted to believe this might be a foretaste of something to come. A proper summer, that is. The kind we had when an ice cream van, like the one that went round and round Arnold Circus, Shoreditch where I sat this evening catching the last rays of sun after work, tinkling out Yankee Doodle Dandy (the van that is, not me), was a permanent fixture of our summer streets. Not making opportunistic forays in spring time, because you never know if this might just be our lot for another year, and because he's still pushing stock purchased in 2007.

But there's something about spring that induces an absurd amnesia, even in hardened cynics and anxious sky-scrutineers like me. An enchantment tinged with nostalgia, redolent of a time when it was always summer, summer never let you down, and you would live forever anyway. And an enchantment not unlike the complicit enthrallments of love. Very like. The willingness to believe this year's scorcher had better last. Prepared to be swept away by its seductive coaxings, and let the guard down. Based on recent performances that would be a mistake. (Choose what referent you will here). But, for one enchanted evening I gave in to its sweet sophistries. Watch this space.