Choosing to spend your summer in London is like choosing to spend your life with an unstable narcissit. There will be days when the clouds lift and you let yourself think “maybe it can always be like this.” We start dreaming of what our children might look like, laughing and playing in the sun, we lie in fields of bluebells, we drink gin and tonics in a can and it tastes like ambrosia.
Then, all of a sudden comes the storm, it’s pissing with rain, someone’s shitting on your from a great height and you’re drunk and alone.
And your beautiful children are two wet cats.
Maybe it was something you said. Don’t cry sweet prince(ss), blow your nose, chuck the cats and read this …
Screw public transport, it’s full of sweaty maniacs…
Cycle and feel the breeze.
However, it is inevitable you will find yourself on packed, sweaty tube at some point …
… In which case, take heed from the sweat lodges of Peru, throw in some Ayahuasca and let’s see what happens …
Want to get that exotic feeling without leaving the country?
Contract a tropical disease.
Take out your headphones …
Summer sounds different.
Pick your own food and eat it, connect with mother earth …
… or mother pavement, depending on where you picked your chicken bone.
(Seriously though pick a strawberry, pick a tomato, just go to one of those naff city farms and pick some food and eat it in your MOUTH, digest that sweet gem – you’ll feel like a superhero.)
Balls to white wine, it has been the downfall of many women …
… Stick with gin and tonic, just don’t screw about and put lemon in it like a scrubber.
When stuck inside working while it’s hot outside, don’t resist things that are quintessentially British, they’re nice* …
Don a straw hat, have a scone (they’re like 50p) and turn on the cricket while you work. Alternatively, put ‘Ill Manors’ on and listen to the voice of a generation no one wants to hear from. Up to you, mate, it’s your reality.
* Except for invasions, slavery and dividing countries will-nilly.
It’s summer now …
Let go of what happened in winter. Blow it up if you have to … (and then quickly blow it out and put the charred remains in a special little box you bury for aliens to find.)
Love picnics? Hate the weather?
Well now every day can be picnic day thanks to cucumber sandwiches, hard boiled eggs, gammon and lemonade. Enjoy outdoors in the sun with Enid Blyton or alone, in your room, with the lights off. Crying is optional. But if the gammons that goddam good, well, let it out baby
Can’t afford a Virgin holiday to space?
Have a psychedelic experience (dusk is a nice time to do it) and take a return trip to inner space. There’s a whole other universe in there.
Go to as many roof top gatherings as possible …
Your proximity to the Gods will ensure underlying divine-like euphoria, and the altitude will ensure the alcohol goes straight to your head.
(N.B – Not a good time to take psychedelics.)
Flies. Bloody flies. Making you look bad in front of your dinner guests …
Not if you’re a canny business man. Pay homage to Damien Hirst’s most shit piece of metaphorical bollocks ever and dump a dead cow/spouse/co-worker in your living room and educate your dinner guests on the cycle of life. They will be both fascinated and enlightened. You can continue the tour with your bathroom cabinet, sink, anything really as long as you’ve had a couple of lines of coke to ensure a perpetual flow of pseudo-intellectual bullshit.
(If you have in fact been infested with butterflies – count yourself blessed.)
Don’t cry for Evita …
You are not Argentina.
Play badminton …
Tennis is a game of lies.
Eat outdoors at every possible opportunity …
Eating indoors in nice weather is for normal Spaniards. Eating afuera you are instantly transmogrified into Penelope Cruz; your relation/waitress/shrubbery becomes Javier Bardem and you laugh as you drink the sweet wines of your country. Then you touch each other’s tanned hands and feel their heart beating softly inside their hot raised veins as the breeze tickles the hairs on your wrists, and the homeless man that asks you for change is an old friend from the town you both grew up in and you laugh and embrace and cry together.
Guaranteed. Every time.
Get wet …
You are 60% water. Find some and relax in it’s cool embrace. If your lido is extortionate and/or filled with wankers, go to Hampstead ladies/gents ponds, sit by the sprinklers, get a on a river boat, dip your toes in the canal, have a pond party. There are no end of charming ways to contract dysentery and stay cool.
Don’t be lazy. Stop hating on yourself …
Make an effort to be as happy as you can possibly make yourself be. Don’t rely on the weather, or other people to do it for you.
So, as with all dysfunctional relationships, when spending the summer in Britain keep your expectations low (ideally have no expectations whatsoever) thank the heavens for small mercies and when the sun comes out, get burned ….