At some point during our lunch meeting yesterday our Italian teacher warned us, perhaps only half in jest, that the current run of fine and sunny weather is not spring but is in fact our summer. (She’s from Sicily and escapes their most summers to experience some proper summer heat.) she may well be right about this being our summer as the temperature is forecast to reach 24° at the weekend. Mind you, that forecast probably only holds true for the south of the country. Here in the northwest, and especially right here where we are close to the foothills of the Pennines, we usually have a rather different climate.
Having said that, I must add that I have seen a lot more men in shorts in the last week or so, even more than the usual collection who need to declare their manliness by wearing shorts all year round. There has also been an outbreak of long, floaty dresses, but then, if you have a long, floaty dress you want to get your money’s worth and wear it when the weather seems fit. The teenage girls, of course, have got their legs out, and their arms and shoulders - short shorts and strappy cropped tops are the order of the day.
The trouble with all of this “girls in their summer clothes” look is that you need a warm jacket if you are going to be out and about into the early evening. Once the sun goes down the temperature plummets, especially if the sky remains clear, as it mostly has done. We have had a fine view of the moon approaching the full though.
The other downside of the dry weather - March was unseasonably dry this year and April so far is following suit - is the fire risk. Apparently at least 286 wildfires have hit the UK so far this year, more than 100 above the number recorded in the same period in 2022, when there were record-breaking temperatures and unprecedented wildfire activity. We’ve had them around here, as I have already commented recently. A small percentage of these fires are started deliberately according to the experts. It’s hard to imagine setting light to a place “just for fun” but here is something quite primevally attractive about fire. It must be very scary though when you realise that your “bit of fun” has got beyond your control.
And around here we have a lot of peat which can spread fire by smouldering underground before breaking out into proper flames further down the line. Mostly, however, we don’t have communities built in the middle of wild-fire-prone forests, fortunately.
I was reading about post boxes. Most of the red letterboxes around here have their tops decorated with crocheted scenes indicative of the season or of what is “trending” at any given time. Reindeer and robins and snowmen and Santas abounded in the run-up to Christmas. Now we have bunnies (definitely not rabbits but bunnies!) and chicks and lambs and eggs. And now it seems Royal Mail is trialling a new kind of postbox, one with a parcel hatch and barcode scanner.
We are writing fewer letters (almost no letters at all!)and postboxes are rarely even close to full, except maybe at Christmas time. And even then, so many people send e-cards, as they do for birthdays as well. It’s no wonder the card manufacturers keep coming up with new special occasion greetings cards - not just Easter and Valentine’s day but Hallowe’en, summer solstice, congratulations on achieving anything and everything and just cheer-you-up cards which send hugs and warm feelings. And it is nice to have something pop through he letter box other than advertising fliers and those plastic bags that charity organisations want you to fill with your unwanted items and leave on the doorstep on a specified day
Anyway, it seems that these new fancy postboxes are needed because we are sending more parcels. It’s all the online buying and selling that does it. Maybe the Post Office hopes they can employ fewer post office managers if customers can scan items directly into the new postboxes, rather like self-checkout in the supermarkets. But the new postboxes, five of which are being tried out in Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, are topped with solar panels, providing power for the scanners I suppose.
That’ll put a stop to ardent crocheters decoration the tops of postboxes! They’ll need somehwre new to decorate.
That’s all for now. The sun is till shining. Time to go and check on the progress of the bluebells in the woods.
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life goes on. Stay safe and well, everybody!
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