Summer in the city

Colchester is officially a city now but as I had to head into London today, I mean the Smoke.

It was approaching the mid 20s as I lumbered off to the station carting a rucksack containing my ancient, breezeblock laptop, in the off chance I would do some work at the conference I was attending.

(Reader, I did!)

I'm even less great in the morning than I used to be. Not a morning person. Not an afternoon or evening person either.

And definitely not a heat person. Therefore I opted for comfort over style with my normcore outfit of chinos (with in built elastic adjusters 👌), check shirt, and trainers. Can't work out whether the look is more Woody Allen or the Only Me dad.

Despite the heat, I returned to the house to pick up a fleece 'just in case'.

Once on the train, it was a bit more relaxed. AC was on max which helped. Because the past few days have been pretty, pretty hot.

Heading into London reminded me of the difference a mini heatwave makes. Britain goes into a kind of weird fever dream. It feels like a different place - one that offers up the chance of a different way of being. People smile more, there's a sense that there's more to life than work, and everything looks a bit more exotic. The shittiest street corner can be transformed into a bit of the Med or the Caribbean with a coupla chairs to sit and take in the passing tapestry of life.

We can never get it quite right though. A few days is usually enough before the fever breaks, and usually some shop windows and bus shelters too. It's the heat. And the booze. 

Those few days are priceless though. I remember one hot summer in my teens when my football team played some early evening games in the fading heat of the day. 

We usually played on battered, muddy pitches on wet and cold Sundays. For these games we were upgraded to the flatter, less battered pitches, baked to a dusty hardness by a few weeks of good weather.

Some of the local girls came to see us and cheer us on - I felt like a legend even though we were notoriously crap. It's one of my abiding memories of that age.

Did we win? I can't remember, but I felt like a winner.

Everything feels different in the sun.