Perfect summers really only exist in novels and in our memories of the summers of our childhood: those school summer holidays which went on for far more than their actual six weeks duration, when the sun shone every day and if you were lucky your parents might let you sleep out in the tent you had put up in the back garden. I’m not even sure that June is officially summer, even though we are rapidly approaching midsummer’s day. Traditionally it’s June 24th, the feast day of St John, but the summer solstice this year is June 20th. Some say the summer solstice marks the official first day of summer, so perhaps we are not quite there yet and it’s still only spring.
However, it doesn’t even feel a bit like spring here at the moment, let alone summer. And it’s no good the weathermen saying this year’s May was the warmest May on record. It certainly hasn’t felt like it in our bit of the world; we had a few nice warm days but that’s it. As a rule I expect to wear sandals from mid-May to mid-September but this year I’ve still got warm tights on - hardly ideal with sandals!
So, no, really this June is far from perfect. The poppies and the buttercups have flourished but they don’t quite compensate. But we’ll have to make do with what we have. Here’s a link to an article about learning to accept “good enough” instead of striving too hard for perfection.
When we were enthusiastic young teachers, active in the teachers’ union, we thought we were moving towards a more perfect world. now it seems even less perfect than it did then.
Besides, ideas of perfection vary from person to person. Grandson Number One was recently tucking into my home-made fruit salad, made according to my father’s almost perfect recipe, when he stopped and shuddered. “Is this banana?!” he cried, “Banana ruins a perfectly good fruit salad!” Now, personally I think a perfect fruit salad has banana as one of its ingredients; it adds a little something to the cocktail of fruit flavours. Now I compromise. I make fruit salad without bananas … but with side dish of bananas for those who want it.
Indeed, I do other similar culinary compromises: raw carrot sticks for Grandson Number Two who won’t eat them cooked, plain fried chicken pieces on the side for those who don’t want the sauce that comes with my chicken stew with red wine. I could go on and on!
There have been a lot of news reports of D-Day commemoration ceremonies, and documentaries about the Second World War. The young men who fought then are 100+ years old, if still alive. When I was a child in primary school there were still a couple of air-raid shelters in the playground. One was used to store sports equipment. The other was always locked and we were convinced it was haunted. We still played occasional games about Germans versus English and I would sometimes have fears that it might all start up again. Then in the 1980s with the Cold War going on, the nuclear threat was suddenly real again and I worried about not having all my family in one place if the worst should happen. And now, when we are fully aware of the consequences of nuclear war, I come across articles like this one about rising tensions and increased risk of nuclear escalation. So much for perfection and an improving world!
But there are still people trying to improve the world. Here’s a link to an article about the actor Toby Jones and a 24 Hour Shakespeare Marathon, to raise funds for Compass Collective, a charity that supports the integration of young refugees in the UK through the arts.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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