Summer this year has been consistently sunny and warm.  We have been able to plan on the assumption of good weather.  Day after day, with only the briefest of interruptions, we have appreciated our gorgeous local landscape in clear air and sunlight.  Although keeping the vegetables anywhere near watered enough has been a challenge, the fruit harvest – both cultivated and wild – has been huge.

Of course, we now know that it has been the hottest summer in the United Kingdom on record.  It has also been one of the driest and, for the first time in local living memory, the stream running through our hamlet has run dry for weeks on end.  That is a huge concern since we also know that climate chaos is here and only going to get worse.  Increasing wildfires, floods, oppressive heat and difficulties in growing food are all inevitable.  But even while knowing of this impending crisis, we have loved the summer weather and, almost as much, the recent rain showers that have started to indicate the onset of Autumn and started to refill the stream.

I picked and used or froze all the gooseberries and blackcurrants.  We also managed to consume, or give to friends, a rich harvest of gorgeous plums and damsons.  However, the wild bullaces (like small damsons) will stay on the trees this year and we have only picked a small fraction of our apples so far. 

Walking the local paths and roads, I have seen lots of buckets of apples offered up to passers-by by those with apple trees heaving with fruit.  And all those walks have tended to take a little longer than usual as I stop to pick and eat the blackberries along the way.  The familiarity with the local hedgerows I have gained since retirement, means I know where the best blackberries are as the summer progresses.  It’s wonderful how many varieties of wild blackberries there are, each bearing different tasting fruit at different times.

The only downside from all this fruit is that I’m gaining a few pounds of weight as I turn the fruit I pick into delicious but calorie filled crumbles.  Still, it’s only for a few months that I have this fresh fruit glut and then I will retreat to more parsimonious use of the harvest we have frozen.  I have time to get my weight back to target by year end.

There have been many other aspects of the summer that I have enjoyed.  In recent weeks we attended a lovely wedding of one of Jane’s nephews and his wife.  Of course, like so many days, this was bathed in warm sun.  That helped to make the event memorable and lovely.  During and around it, we got to see our sons, their partners and our grandchildren – all chatting and playing together.  That was an enormous treat. 

Another recent event that was enhanced by the great weather was an 11-mile charity pub crawl around 11 nearby pubs.  This started at our village pub (The Hog) mid-morning and, for the hardiest (not including me), ended late at night in a curry house or back at The Hog.  I managed half the stops (and pints) but had the excuse of wanting to divert up to Forest Green Rovers to see my team’s game mid-afternoon (we won!) before rejoining the increasingly noisy crawl crowd.  There was much merriment, new relationship making and well over £1,000 in fundraising for the MND Association during the day.  I look forward already to next year’s occurrence.

Jane and I have been out and about a few times too.  We went to Frome to wander the pretty streets before heading on to Bruton and the Hauser & Wirth gallery there.  Frome is comparable to our local town of Stroud but is a little wealthier, has a few more independent shops and is a little more upmarket.  Stroud is moving gradually to that benchmark I believe.

At the Hauser & Wirth gallery we saw an exhibition of works by Jean Tinguely and his partner Niki de Saint Phalle.  We had come across Tinguely for the first time earlier this year when we visited Basel.  It was good to make the connection with that short trip and the mechanical sculptures we had seen in one of the parks there.  A neat touch at Hauser & Wirth was that, as in Basel, the sculptures were powered to show their intended movements.

The Hauser & Wirth gardens, by Piet Oudolf, are always worth visiting.  The planting is dense and constantly changing with the seasons.  Whilst many of the plants were still in full flower, others remained interesting because of their seed heads and textures.  The only strangeness is the building at the far end which looks like an elevated spot from which to view the flat garden space, but just isn’t. 

Even more recently we visited Edward Jenner’s house in Berkeley just a few miles away from us.  Jenner created the smallpox vaccine which has since saved millions of lives and eradicated the disease worldwide.  His house and garden are not particularly remarkable but his life was and it is well told through the exhibits on show. 

For me, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the displays was how they showed the vehemence of opposition to compulsory smallpox vaccination in the 19^th century.  Scepticism about, and opposition, to vaccination was, it seems, as strong then as it has become again now despite all the health gains in the meantime.

It’s been a very good summer.  We haven’t done any a big holidays but the weather at home has helped my retirement feel like a big, comfortable holiday at home.  Waking up to clear sunshine, wandering into town for the newspaper and daily shopping, pottering around the thirsty vegetables in the garden, indulging in the burgeoning fruit harvest and relaxing in the evening sun has all been very pleasant.  Now, as Autumn approaches, maybe we will think about getting away for a bit…..