No Sign of Summer Ending

Warning: Some readers may find the graphic photos of real Summer, including sunshine, outdoor swimming and ice-creams upsetting or traumatic. These are not holiday snaps. They depict real life. Read on at own risk.

It is the evening of Sunday the 30th August. Many of you will be reading this while suffering from a combination of End of Summer Blues, Sunday Night Angst and Back To School Mayhem. I on the other hand live in a place where Summer starts in May, ends in late September and the schools don't go back for another week. I am a lucky lady in lots of ways. 

As I type, it is night-time but still terribly hot and sticky. I may be far from home and away from my family and old friends, but at least I have the luxury of sunshine to buoy my spirits. Oh, and flea markets too. Today there were two in our village but we only made it to one. The heat got too much for us in the end. Even though it was only 11am it was almost 30°C. 

Number Two getting his wallet out to buy that warrier in the crook of his arm.

The boys are developing a good understanding of money and are not at all shy when it comes to asking what those toy soldiers, Lego pieces or Playmobil figures cost!

Number One enjoying a well-earned ice-cream after we'd had a good root around the flea market.

This afternoon it was 37°C as we drove to a local bathing lake to swim and cool off. It was well-needed, let me tell you! It certainly does not look like Summer is going to end any time soon.

 

 Afterwards we came home and munched on our home-grown cherry tomatoes, straight from the vines, and figs fresh from the tree and warm from a day in the sun. 

We are going to have a tough time adjusting when next Sunday night rolls around and there are school bags to pack, alarm clocks to be set and lunches to be made despite Summer not having ended. So chin up you lot - at least you don't have to iron those uniforms in thirty degree heat. 

Summer So Strange

It is not quite 7am and the display on the main street reads 23 degrees as I stroll past on my way back from the bakery with a baguette in my hand. Still sleepy from the muggy nighttime heat, I try my best not to scratch the mosquito bites that tingle on my neck and the back of my leg. I'm getting good at it, finally. You see, I am not on holiday. This is my life, this summer so strange to me.

Oppressive heat, intense humidity, thunderstorms, eating meals outside, afternoons at the ice-cream parlour, mosquito bites, the school closing because it is too hot to teach / be taught, day trips to water parks and lakes for swimming - these are the memories my children will have of summer. A summer so strange to me.

The local pool

After school on a Wednesday

My childhood summers were filled with playing in the garden, trips to the beach on the sunnier days, believing that if the temperature rose to 20°C you could fry an egg on the footpath, eating Choc Ices, the pain of sunburn and the excitement when the tar would melt on the road from the heat.

My children are growing up as the kind of children I only ever encountered at campsites in France - the kind that have a slight tan year round, the kind that speak two languages and run round in the nip without a thought as to why they should wear swimming togs. The kind that eat foods we'd never seen then and who aren't at all bothered by temperatures above 25 degrees. 

Whereas as a child I looked forward to two weeks of outdoor swimming pools, water slides, the smell of suncream and to eating scoops of ice-cream in exotic flavours like pistachio or mango, their lives are like that every day of summer from May to September. 

Yet still they look forward for months to their couple of weeks in Ireland. They plan trips to the beach in their wellies and raincoats, hoping to see horses gallop in the waves. They want to visit Lough Conn, after which one of them is named. They beg to be allowed go back to the Viking exhibition in Dublin and want to go to Tayto Park again. They want to munch cheese and onion crisps and lick 99s "like last time", to play with their cousins, go swimming with Grandad and eat Nana's meatballs. "How many sleeps Mammy?", they ask every evening, longing for their Irish summer, so strange to them. Strange and wonderful.

I'm linking this post up to Twinkly Tuesay and The Truth About.

Wet Strawberries After Rain

Wet strawberries after rain

A smell I've missed

From Irish summers

As a country child

Wafts to me now

Post thunderstorm 

In a different land

Mingling memories

Of strawberry picking

At twelve and thirteen

With humid summers

Here in adulthood.

Neither summer ideal

But scented the same.

Some things will always

Remind me of  home.