What does summer mean to you? Cricket at Lords? Tennis without an umbrella? Top down on the car? Shorts’n’t-shirts? Liberation from football woes?

Or ice cream?

I wear shorts all year, because I’m a bit daft, play tennis in any weather and actually prefer it when its not too hot and similarly will always drive any convertible with the top down unless its pouring… or snowing. But ice cream? That remains a defining feature of ‘the summer’. Once we’re allowed to actually have a summer. Since Brexit ruined the weather AS WELL!!!

So on Thursday, when we for once had both kids all day as Lila was expelled from school. Ok, it was half term, but really its only a matter of time. And they wanted to go to ‘the ice cream farm’. Because we’ve been before. And it was a farm, at some stage in its long-ago, because they have broken old tractors for the kids to play on, and bales of hay for them to jump on. But that’s it. Not a cow in sight. Nor a combine harvester. Just a shop, which sells ice cream. And that’s what Lila and Joey wanted. Ok, they jumped on the bales, played in the playground which is ok but probably not as good as the ones a 4 minute walk from home, but it was the ice cream, in lots of flavours, that they wanted. And were prepared to sit for 30 minutes each way in the car to get them. Was it worth the journey? Oh yeah. It really was. For all of us.

Today we had tickets for a play about dinosaurs at the local theatre. I booked it ages ago, then thought it might be good to take the kids too. What could be nicer on the sunniest, warmest, loveliest, most summeriest Sunday afternoon of the entire year, than sitting in a darkened, air-conditioned theatre with 300 kids screaming at a faux T-Rex? However, it must be said, as kids shows go, and we’ve suffe- endur- seen our share, this one was pretty bloody good. As you can see by this Triceratops. It was real. Alive. No, it really was. No idea how that happened but we’ve all seen Jurassic Park, right?

Then we went for ice cream. Which were also real. I love McDonalds ice cream. People tell you “its got more chicken fat in it than… than a chicken!!!”, or that “its made from petroleum byproducts and increases the world’s carbon levels” or any such bollocks. But I don’t care what they do nor how its made. It is simply wonderful ice cream. Lila and Joey agreed with me. Mel didn’t even get asked the question as she had a face full of McFlurry at the time of the survey.

Happy Summer Days

A xxxx