It’s taken a while but I think I’ve identified what annoys me so much about the current phase of the government’s public health “strategy” (apart from all the obvious things, I mean). It’s that the freedoms they have allowed us in this disastrously organised emergence from lockdown, our distracting bread and circuses, are a sort of Best of Basic British Summer: barbecues, park picnics and beach trips. “This is who we – well, you – are,” the message seems to be. “This is what you people like, isn’t it? Beers in the park and charred sausages, outdoor games and tea from a flask behind a windbreaker.” Just throw in Morris dancing around a maypole carved in the image of Tim Henman for the full bingo card of honest British yeoman summer pastimes.
The alternative explanation would be that it’s our overlords who actually like this jolly, outdoor stuff. I entertained this possibility briefly, hypnotised by Tory MP for Witney & West Oxfordshire Robert Courts’s shocking, nuclear sunburn as he defended government policy, and then contemplating the sheen on David Cameron’s ruddy face (not an activity I recommend, however bored you are). He’s obviously ventured out of that shepherd’s hut for fun in the sun.
But then a cursory glance at the cabinet suggests otherwise: Michael Gove can clearly never be exposed to daylight, Boris Johnson’s colouring suggests susceptibility to heat rash and I can’t begin to visualise Matt Hancock in shorts (which is a mercy). Only Dominic Raab looks like he’d have the faintest idea what to do with a frisbee, which is absolutely not a point in his favour.
I can’t be alone in thinking our new freedoms, proffered like a crap petrol station gift, are the absolute worst of summer; actually, I know I’m not. Certainly, patient chipping away at barbecues’ undeserved good PR has gradually revealed them for the swizz they are. Plenty of us are rightly unenchanted by the prospect of waiting, stuck to a plastic outdoors chair, for lighter fuel-marinated chunks of green pepper on sticks, served hours after our appetites have been deadened by fistfuls of crisps and lukewarm rosé.
Picnics, too, have lost their Enid Blyton nostalgic lustre. They are, after all, merely wasp banquets in one of the “stress positions” they use in interrogation sessions on SAS: Who Dares Wins. Who can sit cross-legged like that for hours? Do your hips work in a different way to mine? I would need something stronger than Pimm’s – less cocktail than cursed cough syrup – to sit for more than five minutes on a picnic rug, juggling sweaty falafels and constantly shifting in search of shade.
I know there are people out there who like beaches and parks: I am related to some of them. Not everyone shares my sensory loathing of sand and presumably most people have heads that do not magnetically attract every ball and frisbee for miles (this is a simple and proven fact: I cannot cross an expanse of urban grass without taking one to the cranium). But nothing good ever happens in parks. “Sex, underage drinking, nitrous oxide and sack-loads of litter” reads the headline in my local paper on one grassy spot this week, which is probably not going to get repurposed as a slogan to lure tourists back here. As a hayfever sufferer, I was once even mistaken for a tree by a peeing doberman in a park while I was woozily immobilised by antihistamines.
I understand that you can accept the imperfect reality of these activities and still love what they signify: summer, freedom and sense memories of happier times. Soaring sales of dips and crisps, beer and burgers are a sign of what we’re trying to conjure up. But I’m a summer scrooge: a row of uninterrupted full sun icons on my weather app sparks less joy than a brown envelope from HMRC. Summer is three months of itching, dysphoria and climate anxiety – and it’s now compounded by perimenopause, which has raised my internal temperature to that of molten lava.
The truth is, I’m bitter because the few parts of summer that I do like are still off limits. A peaceful drink in a dark pub while the summer people are in the beer garden drinking Aperol at those uncomfortable tables with benches attached to them. Or a soporific afternoon in a library finally empty of febrile A-level crammers, watching dust motes dance as a local historian dozes opposite me.
If the government wants to get my kind onside, they’ll have to give us libraries or accept our sweaty wrath. I’ll hiss mine through a window though; between the pollen and the prickly heat it’s dangerous out there for Indoor People, even without the virus.
Follow Emma on Twitter @BelgianWaffling
