The Darling Buds of May (nearly)

Somedays one is as a puppy with a hat sitting in a basket of kittens.

Other days. Well, less so.

Spring with its tawdry razzmatazz lulls us into false security – all crystalline blue skies, baby green leaves, drinks on someone elses balcony, the promise of Summer. We become nicer and all happy chemicals.

At some random point in the future the Pimms Cocktail season will begin, the precise date of commencement, much as the rules of cricket, a matter between the Englishman and God – eachs popularity equally inexplicable.(Pimms and Cricket not Man and God you understand).

And yet as the horror of Winter fades the horror of Summer arises.

The Tube – what fresh hell is this on the Northern Line. The two day period of perfect equilibrium wherein the temperature is as Goldilocks’ porridge is over and notwithstanding the “brisk” spring winds taking strips of skin off you on surface, it is a sauna underground and not, I add, in the lets-find-a-resting-room-whey-hey sort of way. Like the first cuckoo of spring you will spy the first earnest article about the plans to cool the carriages using all manner of ingenious solutions from coolant water to flying pixies with atomisers.

A special subset of the Tube Summer horror must be Tower Hill. This much I know because I pass through it most days. Bewildered tourists abound – they pause at the gates. They look at the gates. They think of jumping the gates. MOVE Wildebeest – this is not a bloody river crossing on the Ngorogoro plain – worse possible outcome is you will be the far side of the gate with the charity muggers. Oh, and the steps down to the platform. Have I mentioned the steps? – I have seen more decisiveness in russian roulette. It’s TOWER HILL so you alight here for the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. The clue is in the name people not to mention the bleeding announcements on the tube.

And parroting “Mind the Gap” is tired. So, so, so tired. If you can be effortlessly cool in Milan you can be effortlessly cool in London. (Though leave the padded silver coat at home, yeah?)

A super special subset of the Tube Summer horror is the charity mugger and their inability to distinguish between those who give a fuck, those who don’t give a fuck and those who might give a fuck but are not going to give a fuck on a twice daily basis signing direct debits to garnishee an increasing token of one’s declining income to a hodge podge of rambling charities with too much money to spend on students who think a cheeky grin and a tight figure is going to part a city boy from his hard earned cash.

Sharing beer gardens with the Yummy Mummies, gone to pot Dilfs and their spawn is perfectly acceptable – it is a neutral space and mildly amusing to see them fall over and flap about wasps attracted to cider as if the local parish paedo has shown up. But the bar is adult space. Especially the leather sofas in the Northgate, with papers, when one is asked to move over slightly to accommodate a most ungracious adult and whining child. Lest you wondered, that was indeed a cold stare. Is it a North london phenomenon alone that parents here must over engage their children at every opportunity? Must they only do adorable things as mini adults and then consternation and stern talkings too when the over excited child, understandably, overdoes it? You were expecting what precisely? There is the cutest child, most mornings at the bus stop, who is an irrepressible ball of energy but in an engagingly self absorbed talking-to-himself, school-bag-swinging sort of way and it clearly is a little too aspergerish for Mummy who spends her time shouting at him to stand still.(Shouting in that not making noise, angry tug hissing sort of way the posh north London Mummy has) This is the person who no doubt will find his running around adult space reciting bible passages or somesuch as an adorable anecdote between the critique of the jerusalem artichoke soup and the is-that-fennel in the mains dinner courses.

Whaaaaaaat? Did you expect me to gush about Spring forever?

Cast a cold eye…..