Welcome to the death of summer...

Wipe that tear. Hug that friend. Let's mourn the passing of summer together. Is that it? Has it gone for good? My reliable source says that a reincarnation - albeit very hazy and a poor shadow of its former self - will appear in the middle of the month. That will be no consolation for us though, will it?

*Goes misty-eyed* I remember when summer used to last, well, all summer. It seems that for the last three years all we've had is four days of scorchingly hot, cloudless, days then... light drizzle and a few other warm, but not summery, days. I do have a plan though.

In future we will all work on the premise that summer will be crap. We will ban school summer holidays and, instead, have 'Official Clement Days (OCD)'. We will all have to become keen weather watchers (some might even obsess about it...) because whenever a warm sunny day is expected the Government will declare an OCD, the country will close down (except visitor attractions which will be manned by Ned Flanders type volunteers) and we'll all migrate, en masse, to the coast. Usually this will mean eight hours in a traffic jam... ahhh just how summer's meant to be spent.

I've just been told, by my better half, Claire, that this post makes me really English. I disagree. I think 35,000 years ago our ancestors looked skywards, shrugged shoulders, grunted and then walked back into their caves shaking their heads as they went, thinking 'when will I ever get the mammoth rug dry?'...