Here comes summer! And along with it, ten annoying things…

Ahhh…
Don’t you just love it?
The lovely light nights, ice cream at any given moment, paddling in the ocean, fish and chips for tea at the seaside, Don Henley mourning when his boys will be gone, gentle summer breezes carrying the smell of flowers…yes, summer is definitely on its way.

Therefore, it’s time for a petulant rant before it finally gets here and stakes it’s claim.

Behold! My top ten summer peeves. It would have been fifteen, but I’m trying to cut down on peeving…

1. Mid-life crisis drivers

Top down! Sunglasses on!
Yeah, you look fine…sexy as hell. We ALL want to do you. It’s because your car has no roof you see, massive turn on. We can actually see the poisonous road breezes ruffling through your bald. Oh yeah baby, work that open air.

Pardon? No, absolutely not! You don’t look anything like a sad desperate cock! Who on earth would say a mean thing like that to you?? I’ll slap them silly, yes I will!

2. Chimineas

Thanks Mexico.

Nothing like the smell of fire everywhere to make summer complete. I love arriving at my destination with my clothes carrying the delicate scent of a cremation chapel.

“Are you wearing a new perfume?”

“Why yes, it’s ‘Great Fire of London’ by Gucci.”

“It’s hot!”

*groan*

3. Insects

Things mutate in hot weather. Previously normal sized and non-threatening species grow beyond their normal proportions into unrecognisable horrors. They also get bolshie and cocky.

How many times can you waft your hand in front of your fucking face during a summer day?
Either they find us attractive and they’re trying to steal a kiss before asking us out, or human faces smell like gourmet insect scran.

4. Pasty white man breasts

No. Just no. Your wife may no longer give a shit, and accepts you just the way you are…awww, that’s lovely, but I don’t wish to see your hairy chest flabmounds, glistening provocatively with sweat. It puts me off whatever summer treat I’m trying to enjoy when you come bouncing along.

5. Wasps

Why are they armed??  As far as I can see (not too far, short-sighted) they serve absolutely NO PURPOSE. Bees at least are useful, helping flowers make love to each other, giving us incredible honey and all kinds of magical hive shit that has health properties for humans and bees alike, they deserve some kind of defence mechanism.

But wasps are chav bees. They are the workshy lazy fops of the flying kingdom. If this was the 1950’s, wasps would be getting a clip round the ear from a firm but fair policeman named Frederick. Of course, Frederick would soon after be stung to death by those wasps, in a violent frenzy of revenge. I hope you didn’t get too attached to him.

6. Tit tattoos

Summer + large women + spaghetti strap vests  = a terrible thing I saw last summer at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Terrible, terrible thing. I will carry the mental scars forever.

Picture this. Large woman, snogging the face off her beau to the point of swallowing and digesting his nose. After they’d finished, and vacated the bench they’d sullied, I noted (not without horror) that on her pendulous right nork that was half hanging out of her tiny vest, she had a very artistic tattoo.

OF HIS FACE.  IN COLOURED INK. SURROUNDED BY GREEN STARS.

I was so shocked, I almost dropped my toffee apple.
Oh women. Why deface yourselves thus? Well, feel free to deface yourselves thus, just don’t show the rest of us. Ta.

7. Garden centre mentality

Here’s a little play I’m writing.

In an English garden. It is the beginning of summer. A woman appears.

She glances around her.

“I believe I shall grow crops this summer.”

After a trip to a local garden centre where she spends seventeen thousand pounds on seeds, grow bags, pink garden tools, a flowery watering can and clay pots, she is ready to begin.

“I believe I shall plant tomatoes here.”

She begins to dig. A worm appears.

“EEEEWWWWWW!!! GROSS!”

She runs indoors.
Judge Judy is on. She watches it. To forget.

6 months later…

*Barbers Adagio for Strings plays softly*

The watering can lies rusting in a corner.
The tools sit redundant in the shed.
The seeds are unplanted.

The garden is barren.

FIN.

8. Weird village shenanigans

I live on a very small ‘you’re not from round here are you?’ peninsula made up of towns and villages. We’re close enough to Liverpool to enjoy the bright lights of the big city, but after 9pm we tend to close ourselves off from the rest of the world and get back to our poppet carving, god-appeasing animal sacrifice, and bizarre fertility rites.

I’m kidding. Sort of.

Summer brings out all the Wicker Man behaviour in my little corner of the world. We dance around maypoles, do weird parades celebrating nothing, and have a peninsula-wide fascination with scarecrows (there is even a festival), and they pop up all over the place in the warmer months. Even in church.

I have no idea if these two were married in a formal ceremony, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were. Following that, they’d be anointed with beef dripping and ale, then burned as we chanted excitedly and hopped naked around them to bring a fat orchard crop. Haha, joking!
Now fuck off and leave us alone you Johnny Foreigners. You don’t understand our gentle ways!

9. Everyone telling you to ‘get out there in the sunshine’

Shut up. Sometimes, it’s nice to stay indoors and watch an entire box set of something trashy. What’s this rule that as soon as that big hydrogen and helium twat appears, we all have to strip down to our kecks and run around in it laughing like escaped prisoners?

The sun hates you, haven’t you realised by now?

It dries your reservoirs up so you can’t water your grass, it burns your grass, it wrinkles the living fuck out of you, it dehydrates you, it encourages ants to invade your house, and it bleaches your car paint. Oh, and you know that mole on your arm that’s looking a bit odd lately? Hmm.

10. Barbecues

I had to say something.
I quite like barbecues actually.

I find our British attachment to them rather amusing, the minute the sun peeps from behind a cloud you can hear the sound of meat slapping onto grill wires around the entire country.
The angry hiss, as the burger you didn’t mould properly flops through onto the coals. Processed cheese slices. Jugs of Pimms made wrong. Bowls of limp salad with insects daring each other to land on them. Jumpers for goalposts. Burnt sausages. Undercooked meat diarrhoea. Ahh…grand.

Oh come on, you know I love it really. Everyone is happier and your problems never seem so bad when the sun is shining.
Yep, summer is great.

Roll on Halloween!

– Chrissy