The One with The Outside and The Summer

It's bloomin' hot!

Me and hot weather don't get on. And before you all start I know I shouldn't complain because it's lovely to see the sun... blah..blah..blah.. and we don't get enough of it... etc... etc... and we need to make the most of it... but the truth is... I don't like it.

There I've said it. I feel cleansed.

I don't like the summer. It's my least favourite season.

I get uncomfortable when it's too hot. My ankles, feet and fingers swell, I get prickly heat, I get bitten to buggery by midges and gnats and god knows what else. Too much sun (and by too much I mean about ten minutes) gives me headaches and upset stomach. And that's in dear old blighty. You can imagine the state I'd be in if I went abroad and ate dodgy salad washed in local water after a day on the beach. There'd be nothing left of me.... actually that's not a bad weight loss idea... I might look into that.

And another thing I want to get off my ample but horribly sweaty chest is... 

I don't like eating outside. 

Everyone's so bloody fascinated with it. "Oh lets eat outside shall we? It's such a glorious day. It's a shame to waste it." 

No lets not. I don't want to wash outside, get dressed outside, watch TV outside, do all my other normal mundane things I do everyday outside, so why the hell would I want to suddenly eat outside? It makes me feel slightly sick to be honest, like dirt and germs and bugs are getting all over my food. It's like too much outside seems to get everywhere. I've never had a picnic on either park or beach where I haven't ended up with a mouthful of grass or sand. 

I'll cope with a BBQ as long as I can take the food indoors and eat it at a table, rather than try and stand up and make conversation, whilst ramming a burger in my mouth with one hand and balance a glass of wine with the other. 

Can you guess I'm not an 'outdoors' type of girl? Early on in our relationship hubby once asked if I'd like to go camping. I gave him a withering look of 'WTF' and we've never spoken of it again. 

So me and the height of summer don't get on.

Don't get me wrong I like to see the sun. It's cheerful and makes the sea sparkle and to quote Coldplay 'it's all yellow' and stuff (well they just said yellow but you get my meaning) but the heat quite frankly does me in.

Compounding all my other summer woes, I've got sodding hay-fever! I never get hay-fever. Lemon Cake Lady thinks it's because we've moved to the 'burbs' and now I'm not in the centre of town and am surrounded by grass and that (we're well technical us two - we should have a science show) I'm reacting to the pollen. I think she has a point. I've certainly been wandering in and out of the garden much more now I have patio doors. Whereas at the old place I think I can count on one hand the amount of times I ever went up to our garden because, as we lived in a row of terrace houses, it was just so exposed and not private at all.

Talking of exposed this brings me to summer clothes. They quite clearly don't fit do they. Especially not when your whole body swells up and down like someone pumping up the Michelin man of an evening. There's nowhere to hide in summer clothes. There's just not enough of them to cover all the bits I want to cover. There's so 'skimpy'. Me and skimpy are not natural bed fellows. To be honest I look a bastard in skimpy. But then so do a lot of people to be brutally honest. 

Who hasn't driven along in the summertime and spotted, from the open windows of their cars, some terrible sights in shorts and crop tops and worst of all boob tubes? Who hasn't eagerly taken the piss out of people on the beach who really, really shouldn't be wearing speedos or a bikini? And who hasn't, when spying these poor deluded people who really shouldn't be wearing what they are almost wearing, muttered under their breath "The sights you see when you haven't got your gun?'

If you haven't then you're a better person than I am because I've done all that and worse. 

Only now I've gone and joined them as, with some trepidation, I bought a pair of shorts. Well it was so hot and I could no longer stand wearing jeans or leggings. They have been hiding in my drawer for a while, as I was too nervous to wear them. But then the heat got too much for me this week and as I raced out of the door with the boy, on our way to a day over at Lemon Cake Lady's, I stuffed them in my bag.

I got changed when I was there and discarded my jeans in the safety of her house, to wear my new soft, jersey and oh so comfy shorts in the privacy of her back garden.

What a revelation! I felt more free, more able to deal with the weather and above all loads cooler.

This is obviously where I've been going wrong with summer. I should just join the masses of ill advised people who get it all out in the hot weather and don't give a monkeys bum what anyone thinks of them.

So that's what I've done. I wearing my shorts now while I'm typing this and I don't care! 

Of course I'm in my house with the windows open and the blinds shut so no one can see me but at least I'm making an effort. 

The One Up The Rec

On Wednesday me and the boy had a day at home together, which involved nothing more strenuous than a bit of light play-doh work, some CBeebies, making a picture for daddy with glitter glue and pom-poms and endless re-enactments of Thomas the Tank Engine stories.

We did take a break from all this activity to nip up the Co-Op, where we cashed in a completed card of 'Goodness Gang and Friends' stickers and £2 of my hard earned cash in exchange for Felicity Fig - seen below in all her purple glory - yes I thought she was a red onion too but I have been told she's a fig. 

After the shop we went to the local park. Well it's more of a recreation ground really but it's got swings and slides, a goalpost, a basketball net and loads of green space to just run around on. It's really close to the new house too, which is a bonus. When we arrived at about quarter past four I was surprised to see we had the place to ourselves! 

The rec backs onto a golf course, separated by a large wire fence and trees. Where the rec and the golf course join the ground slopes away into quite a grassy dip. As I was soon to discover you can sit, or lay in that dip and not be seen from the main body of the rec because the dip obscures you, and you can't be seen from the golf course because the trees shield you.

It's a perfect place to hide!

The boy was running around with full abandon, Felicity Fig by his side, when he ran down to the end of the rec towards the aforementioned dip.

That's when I spotted them. They were probably 13 or 14 years old, 15 at a push. Both in the colours of the local secondary school uniform and both, shall we sat, slightly flushed in the face.

To use an old fashioned expression they were 'getting off' with each other. 

"What are they doing?" asked the boy innocently 

"Come over here darling" I said as I motioned for the boy to follow me back to the swings. 

The young lad looked up and made awkward eye contact with me but the young girl was in another world, laying on the grass, one arm above her head, in an almost 'Mills and Boon' pose, that look of utter delirious joy on her face at having experienced a damn good kiss. 

I must point out that no clothing had been removed, not even upstairs outsides; and from the small time I observed them they seemed to be just having a bloody good teenage snog. 

And why not hey?

I left them to it.

We didn't leave the rec straight away though. The boy had come to play so play we did. A safe and discreet distance away from their youthful fumbling of course and up where we could no longer see them. 

Every now and again the lads head would pop up (stop sniggering at the back please) and check if were still there but we stayed as long as we wanted to thank you very much. It is a public space after all. I was happy to leave them to it but I wasn't going to be intimidated into not letting my little boy play in, what is after all, a children's playground area. 

When we got home I thought about it a bit more and wondered if I'd done the right thing to leave them to it? Should I have given them a 'Oi what are you doing?' to make them scarper? Or was I right to mind my own business? After all you never know what you're going to get with youngsters nowadays do you? I doubt they would've just sloped off with their tail between their legs (stop making your own jokes up). I probably would've been told to f-off! 

So I want to know, what would you have done? 

Because my other frankly quite startling thought was, in 10 years time or so that could be my boy.....

I'm beginning to think I should've chucked a bucket of water over them.