I was stopped while walking through Islington the other day, by a young reporter from a London radio station.  He asked if I minded telling him why I loved summer, as they were collecting people's thoughts on the matter.  I instantly objected to the little ponce as he’d already assumed that I loved summer (probably because he personally couldn't wait for that time of year where he could strap on his espadrilles and tight little stripy sailor
shirt… twat).  So I pointed out that NO I could not do his little vox pop thing, because I don’t "love summer" in fact I pretty much hate it… which really surprised him...

There are many things to love about the summer in England.  Because we have such varied weather, those few short weeks of consistent sunshine once a year are a time for celebration for some people… but not everyone.

Hay-fever sufferers obviously could probably live without it.  If you've never suffered from hay-fever let me give you a quick run down of what it's like: 

1: It's shit.

There you go and that's all you need to know.  Have some sympathy for those around you who are feeling the full brunt of the pollen attack, because it's quite possible they are being driven to the very brink of psychopathic madness and may just snap at any moment.  

Commuters too have their problems in summer.  Being one of the perpetually dislocated myself I know that commuting can be a mental challenge at the best of times.  Turn up the heat however and the stress and physical fatigue multiply exponentially.  I'm commuting right now while I write this and seriously it's getting very old very fast now that the sun out.  In the colder months the trains and underground metro system are a haven for the commuter, in the summer however a better physical representation of the phrase "out of the frying pan and into the fire" could not have been devised on purpose.  London Underground system in particular may have actually been devised by Satan himself, I'll need to check my sources on that one, but in summer it certainly seems like a reasonable possibility.

Now what happens if you combine both of the above situations… i.e. being a hay-fever sufferer who is also a commuter? 

Well it’s a bit like this:-

Imagine having thousands of tiny needles jabbed in and out of your eyes, while several thousand slightly different needles are being jabbed in and out of your sinuses and the lining of your nose, all constantly while snot and gunk stream out of your face.  Imagine your skin (especially on your face) feels like it's being attacked by swarms of ants with tiny little blow torches and that someone has filled all of the inner spaces inside of your head with expanding foam that has subsequently hardened and then snapped into pieces which grate against each other. 

Add to this the general discomfort of being overly hot and then realizing that when you get to the tube station the temperature inside is about 30% hotter than it was out in the baking sun, and when the train finally arrives after keeping you waiting for four times the normal waiting time for no readily explained reason, it's full to the gunwales with people but you have no choice but to squeeze in amongst them, while even more people squeeze in behind you and there's a guy in a brown suit holding onto the overhead hand rail and his suit is stained with sweat but it's obvious he doesn't wash it that often, because it smells like a combination of a stale beef and onion pie with a pint of hot vinegar thrown in for good measure and all the while you have to breath it in because there's nowhere else for you to put your fucking face and the smell slowly builds up inside your agitated nostrils and you can feel the sneeze rising…

Well that's a bit like being a commuter with hay-fever… just a bit.

So if you see someone who's not looking chirpy this summer, do yourself a favour and steer clear of them, don’t call them a miserable git, don’t say “cheer up it might never happen”  and don’t ask them why they're skulking around on such a lovely day.  If they have a tissue to hand don’t ask them if they have a cold or even if they have hay-fever… leave them alone.

Because if you don’t and you bumble along and… oh I don’t know, ask them "why do you love summer?"… they might just turn around and fucking kill you.