What is the real sign of summer?

Now that the ‘sunny bit’ of the year is over, I got to thinking about what truly defines summer.

What needs to happen for me to declare it official?

As a county, Cumbria is still in shock at the unprecedented recent run of high temperatures, with several days in a row during the middle of the heatwave peaking at a sweltering a-bit-over-20C. Phew. Scorchio!

We’ve also suffered from a drought of epic proportions, with the number of days without rainfall hitting a spectacular two digits. It got so bad that I had to remember how to operate a ‘watering can’ which, apart from the trauma involved, was also confusing as it was made out of plastic. The fact that the water flow seemed to be deliberately restricted by snails in the spout was also deeply perplexing. And I got a wet foot when the spout fell off.

The longest day of the year has passed, which I enjoyed in its fullest glory by watching the sun set on the Arnside shoreline. OK, it was via my laptop and the webcam opposite the pier, but hey – the sentiment was there, right?

The birds have been starting their territorial disputes extra early, and if their unwelcome cacophony hasn’t woken me up, Mrs G’s hay-fever induced sneezing attacks have saved unnecessary wear and tear on the alarm clock instead.

It’s still daylight when Huw Edwards raises one eyebrow slightly on the BBC News at Ten, and Radio 2 have been playing Don Henley’s “The Boys Of Summer”, and The Divine Comedy’s “The Pop Singer’s Fear Of The Pollen Count”.

These occurrences could all individually be indicators of summeriness, and collectively would have most people ticking the “Hell, yeah!” box on the form asking “Is it summer now, or what?”

Not me though. Even national sporting failure of epic proportions isn’t proof where I’m concerned. Hearing Andy Murray mumbling shortly before I nod off (Coincidence? I think not.) about his chances at Wimbledon doesn’t cut it, either.

For some of you, shame-free elderly men with their shirts off and wearing socks with their sandals would be enough, or maybe cute kids in floppy hats wearing over-sized sunglasses.

Ominous signs that a recent trauma has befallen a child, signified by a drying patch of ice cream on the pavement, or the mile-long queue at the chippy, should be enough for most aficionados of precision summer identification, but even they don’t satisfy me.

And then, last weekend at the allotment, the planets aligned, and summer got my official endorsement as a happening thing. I didn’t know until Tuesday though.

Scratching my arm, I felt a tiny bump. On closer inspection, I discovered that a tick had buried it’s bonce in my skin, and was partaking of a spot of Grenville Smoothie (with extra caffeine).

Break out the Pimms, strawberries and cream. Summer is official! Better make that bite cream, actually.

This post first appeared as my 'Thank grumpy it's Friday' column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 27th of June 2014. You can read it on the newspaper's website here, but taking into account that it is identical (including the title), I could understand it if you decided not to bother.

Yes, I do have a large red, itchy, lump on my arm from extracting my little parasitical chum. Thanks for asking.

(Keeping it smooth on a Saturday. Currently trying to look cool - without much success - whilst listening to "The New Dictionary Of Blues And Soul". Huh! Good God! Yeah.)

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It was always tricky to fit everything you wanted into the intentionally short character count of Twitter, especially when, like me, you tend to write ridiculously long sentences that keep going on and on, with no discernible end in sight, until you start wondering what the point was in the first place. The maximum length of a text message originally limited a tweet to 140 characters, due to it being a common way to post your ramblings in Twitter’s early days. Ten years later, we’ve largely consigned texting to the tech dustbin, and after a lot of angst, the social media platform’s bigwigs have finally opted to double your ranting capacity to 280. Responses ranged from “You’ve ruined it! Closing my account!” to the far more common “Meh” of modern disinterest. As someone rightly pointed out, just because you have twice as much capacity doesn’t mean you actually have to use it. It is, of course, and excellent opportunity to use the English language correctly and include punctuat...

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