Dancing in the street

Summer's arrived!  Well, it is June.  Finally, but finally the sun is generating some heat.  Today it's 27 degrees in the capital, and you can smell the optimism in the streets.  Everyone has a spring in his or her step, and feels emboldened.  "Work can fcuk itself for a few days" seems to be the prevailing philosophy.

This does have a dark side though.  The English are wont to drink like teenagers in a suburban bus shelter when the sun is high, wide and handsome like this.  Then they get dizzy and aggressive.  Not nice.  Luckily, the missus and I are off to the north this evening, where it's cooler, both meteologically and figuratively.  There'll be no crapulent sunstroke in Yorkshire tonight, thank Christ.

As per I've spent a king's ransom on nibbles for the journey, and I'm not done yet, by God.  The plan is to get some refreshing white wine at Euston, so it's nice and cold for the start of the journey.

Hurrah for the summer.  Hurrah for the north.  And hurrah for a couple of cheeky days off.

Have A3 boarding pass, will travel

Mrs O and I are off for a long weekend in southern Spain tomorrow.  We're doing a greatest-hits tour of the places we know well - Jerez and Cadiz.  I adore Andalusia; it's so vital and so brutal.  We've never been there this early in the year, and it's going to be bastard-hot.

We normally head down to Al-Andalus in late September at the earliest.  Even then it's generally scorching.  I've a photo from Jerez of one of those giant thermometers you get outside pharmacies (pharmacists, why?).  It reads 39 degrees.  So presumably in August it's like sitting in an inglenook fireplace whilst dressed like a Norwegian trawler man.  Oh, well, the hotel has a pool, and Cadiz is on the Atlantic, so what's the worst that can happen to a pasty London Irish weed, comme moi?

The greatest pleasure on Earth has to be cowering from the relentless heat of an Andalusian day until the sun begins its descent and then heading off to a sheltered bar somewhere that has a view of the sea or a river and sipping a freezing-cold fino sherry.  The astringent quality slakes the thirst no nothing else I've ever quaffed.  Suddenly, the limbs lighten and the brain springs back into life for a few hours.  Colours appear more vivid and you just want to embrace life.  Necking Guinness whilst listening to sean nos in a dark pub in the west of Ireland is fantastic, but it doesn't get close to this.  Nosirree.

People - a lesson from history

I was on the tube again this morning, due to my unusual hamstring.  It's not actually sore today; don't tell anyone.  I've an appointment with my physio tomorrow.  If it carries on like this, I'll have to start making symptoms up.  

I've got a bit of previous when it comes to bullshitting professionals in a one-to-one situation.  I'm a Catholic, and as a child I had to start making up sins when I went to confession.  It's not that I was free from sin at that age (I am now), but I used to dry up under the pressure of the confessional, so I'd start inventing generic venial misdemeanours.  I don't suppose Father [insert Irish surname here] bought it for a minute.  I wish now I'd taken the trouble to make up so more interesting ones, from a theological perspective I mean.  "You been feeding your budgie Holy water?  Hmm...not sure how to deal with this one...it does sound quite bad...I'll have to phone the Bishop.  Give up cheese and hop around on one leg until I get back to you."

Where was I?  Oh, yes, the tube.  So it's about 50 degrees Celsius as per on the Jubilee Line, and we're rammed in there like bluebottles inside a hollowed-out turd when some rotter decides to fart.  I'm not a violent man, but by Christ I would battered the culprit flaccid had I got my gloves on him.  Have we not all got enough to deal with, what with the heat and the general pervasive air of gloom?

The heat is off

Phew, it's getting warm - a subtle reminder to the populace that it's still technically the middle of summer.  There's a temptation to think the season over now as the World Cup has just ended.  I had to remind Mrs O last night that we had most of our summer jollies still to look forward to, so pucker-up!  This is a shameless role-reversal for me as I'm ordinarily the one with a face like a clattered asshole.  Yet, here I was, bestriding the front room like an upbeat colossus.  I can only suppose this optimism is my unconscious mind trying to deal with triple-digit humidity.

The wife and I usually take our holidays late in the year to avoid the great unwashed and their mewling progeny.  This year we had planned to go to Tel Aviv but John Simpson advised against it.  Instead we're having a series of mini-breaks in Spain and Germany.

On the surface, they're uneasy bedfellows, Germany and Spain, but each offers the wise traveller a wonderful playground in its own way.  People always cock-on about visiting this monument and that restaurant when they're on hols, like it's some sort of Ironman competition.  You're there to relax and enjoy yourself, you dozy twat.  People who claim that they're not interested in a bit of low impact R&R during the vacs and prefer instead to yomp or go pot-holing need an electric shock to the brain, frankly.  When I go on a mini break, I want things to be different, other and new.  What I don't want is onerous.  This is why S&G offer very different cultural mores, but similar experiences.