Around the middle of June each year, a curious phenomenon starts to take place around Britain. As the sun fattens in the sky and the air temperature rises, the huddled masses of merry England start to emerge, blinking, from their winter torpor and gear up for the short-lived annual heyday that is British summer!
Perhaps it is our habitual resignation to the gloom and drizzle that makes up two thirds (in a good year) of our annual weather that provokes this curious change in us as a nation, perhaps the heat affects the functioning of our brains. Whatever the cause, one thing is for certain; the British, in our admittedly mild and somewhat reserved way, go crazy for summer. Ok, not paint your ears blue and run naked through the shopping centre screaming for custard crazy, but as the sunshine hours increase and we start shedding the layers our national eye starts to twinkle that little more brightly, our heart to dance a little antic hey, and a subtle, full moon character shift takes us in its gentle grip. Grey complexioned office drones gain a little of the latin lothario; tweedy librarians, unfastening the top buttons of their pussy-bow blouses lean a little closer to...