Gin is the dream

Gin is the dream.

Gin, a pretty summer’s dress and a live band playing reggae on a beach.

It feels, for the first time this year, like summer is truly on its way. The sun is not completely obliterated by clouds, it hasn’t yet (fingers crossed) rained and that lethargic feeling that accompanies a hot summer’s day is making its sinuous way into our day-to-day patterns.

And despite all that, it still seems like the dream.

The dream is, for those who don’t know, a way of saying that something is ideal or perfect. It’s a verbal tick that I’ve picked up from a friend of mine – that and ‘mare’ (short for nightmare) – and it seems to be the perfect way of expressing the whole experience of longing for something so incredibly much.

For example, jumping on the train to Littlehampton after work and heading down to see my boyfriend, whom I haven’t seen in a fortnight, is the dream. Buying some chilled bottles of cider and going in sitting in St James’s Park, watching the world go by, is the dream. And walking back past the remains of Winchester Palace in the crisp night’s air, after an evening at the Globe, is the dream.

So as summer rears its head, and before it ducks back down out of sight as it so often does, go enjoy the sunshine.
NB:  This was supposed to be posted yesterday, but the bad weather that followed the writing of the post and fried my home's internet modem prevented it.  That's what you get for thinking positive things about British weather...