Summer used to be long. Cast your mind back a bit and you’ll see what I mean. It went on forever.

It seemed to start just after Easter and would go on until there were piles of leaves that you could give a good kicking. I reckon it was almost six months long, give or take a week here and there.

And I used to do so much in the summer. We’d hang out by the old swimming pool, all overgrown in the woods, hunting for toads. Or it might have been frogs.

We’d play football all day. We’d go walking through the nature reserve and sit in the hide, looking at birds (for about ten minutes). There was fishing at the weir. Once we caught a pike and it bit my brother’s finger.

We’d stay out late round the back of our house until the light got dusty. Dusty, not dusky; that pink/red dusty, all warm smelling. And then you’d get shouted in for bedtime, and you’d sleep quickly, waiting for it to be morning again.
Before I go on, I should say that I’m not an old man. I’m not reminiscing about the 1950s. My childhood wasn’t that long ago. But it does feel like another world. It feels sad that my summers aren’t as long, mainly because I work most days and I don’t fish or hunt for toads. I don’t spend unstructured time doing nothing except wandering around with friends. I don’t lie in the grass for an hour for no reason other than to lie in the grass for an hour. And summer feels a lot shorter as a result.

So this summer is going to be the summer of getting back to unstructuredness. Summer will get longer again.

To make it longer, I’m not going to try to fit my summer into a week somewhere slightly warmer, on a beach or up a mountain. I’m not going to waste two days in an airport getting sweaty and uptight. I’m going to stay right here, at home. And I’m just going to take more days off. I’ll use up all of my holiday. And then I might buy a few days back from the company. I’ll cobble together as much non-work time as I can muster.

Then, when I’ve got all of those days in a nice pile, I’ll do something proper with each and every one. I’ll lie under a tree for a whole day. I’ll swim in an open air pool. I’ll ride my bike as far as I can by 3pm and then ride hard all the way back home. And I’ll sit out in the pinky red dust afterwards and drink a very cold drink.

I can play out as late as I want, because I can make the rules this summer.

Dan Germain