I’ve been joking lately that this summer is worse than last year’s–the kicker, of course, being that my grandad died last summer. But the season itself was perfect, a warm hole to hide in when hospitals and early morning phone calls and sifting through belongings got too much. It was a difficult summer. I was planning a wedding. I was preparing to mourn, and then I was mourning, and then there was a funeral, two weeks before the wedding. Things didn’t wind down until I was on a Greek island, sobbing and apologising because this is supposed to be fun, isn’t it, and it is! We went on a boat just yesterday! But oh my god I am broken, I am different.
Last summer I learned what I had known for a while: that nobody whose job it was to take care of me would. That the people who brought me into this world might never grow up, and now I had lost my only reliable adult. My father was predictably absent, predictably childish, predictably letting my cousin, his nephew, take on the lion’s share of death admin. My mother and I argued for the final time, at least for now. She said things that left me truly flabbergasted at her lack of care for my feelings, but then, she would likely say the same. I did, however, learn that so many people who were not biologically obligated to care for me would, and they did, and I love them more than I thought possible.
All this to say last summer was a little broken. I live at the beach, and there was so much swimming. So much hiding on the pebbles. I was also very scared; of people, of leaving the house, of doing much beyond sitting on a blow-up boat at sea, far away from the problems of everyone on shore. It was a long season, dragged out by a Greek island honeymoon, and I didn’t feel the dreaded bite of winter or fall until long into November.
But then, winter hit. December was painful. April was freezing, but I bought a new picnic blanket. May was cold, changeable, but by the end of it I took paddleboarding lessons. I was ready, so fucking ready, for the chill of a difficult, long winter to turn into the months that would feed me for another one. The start of June was promising, and we got out on the boat and swam in the clear water and I got stung by a little jellyfish. Yes, there were jellyfish this summer, briefly. Clear disks, moon jellyfish, hundreds of them at my local watersports centre and then in the sea as it warmed. Then black and orange jellyfish with long, stinging tentacles that left me with scabs because I insisted on a short wetsuit. I know they were a symptom of climate change, but I loved them all the same.
I thought then, as I suffered from the June heat, we were in for a real belter. I didn’t want good enough. This year, I brattily wanted a do-over. I wanted to enjoy a full season, to see my friends, to not mourn. I would paddleboard every morning if the wind and current allowed, have elaborate picnics on the beach, go down every day and every evening and eat all my meals on hard stones. I would watch the full moon rise over the water. Sometimes I would head into the South Downs or to another beach, just for a change of scenery.
We made good on our promises to the season. We went to the zoo, we bought our own paddleboards, we swam when it seemed like we mightn’t go into shock. But then I went to Corfu, and when I came back the weather had turned. Cold, harsh, blowing winds and dark skies. I got sick, a bacterial infection that knocked me out for weeks and eventually led to me getting COVID. I spent cold days in hospitals and on the phone to doctors and I got some answers for chronic health problems and I started to feel hopeful but, wait! Why am I spending summer in the hospital?
Why, when the sun isn’t even out and I would be too exhausted to enjoy it anyway. Some of the best days this summer, the ones spent paddleboarding and swimming, were buffeted by days sleeping or downing salt to try and up my blood volume. We explored the Downs, we took a few days away, we laughed and made the most even when it was pouring down with rain, but I have been failed by the weather and by my body, and now it’s the end of August. The irony is that summer makes my chronic illness symptoms worse, but frankly I don’t give a fuck.
That isn’t to say I didn’t do anything good this summer. I did. I am very, very good at making the best of a bad situation, and so is my husband. In amongst the bacterial infections, shit weather, COVID, chronic illness flareups and really shit weather, we did what we could. Trips to the Downs, paddleboarding, two Hives shows, two Pulp shows, beach lunches, sea swims. We tried. I even went to a skateboarding retreat in the countryside, where it rained for an entire day and I almost burned my tent down.
But I wanted a do-over. A real summer, a whole one that, yes, I know is only possible in this country because of climate change. I know we’re lucky to not be on fire. But winter makes me feel so terrible and last summer was so scary and I just wanted–I don’t know. I kept clinging on to an idea of the summer really starting, sometime, but then it just didn’t. I wanted to enjoy a summer in my little resort town, and now I want to enjoy a winter without tourists throwing trash everywhere, puking, throwing stones at seagulls. I like my empty, cold beach too. I just wanted a real summer first.
As Andy Hull once sang: I can remember wishing that the season had lasted a little longer/it don't, and we die.