Editorial: Summer's here, say it quietly

OPINION: It has been said in hushed tones, with a look skyward and fingers crossed.

But at the risk of invoking an ancient weather curse or riling the gods of all things intangible and temporary, maybe, just maybe, we can start thinking about summer, and not one that lasts just a few days, promises so much and then vanishes like the mirage that had teased us with the possibility of water and shade in a burning desert.

Of course, Murphy's Law means that these few words of hope, written with a glass of beer close at hand, Kiwi jazz diva Beaver on the stereo and preparations under way for a barbecue, will be read the next day by someone whose first stop in the paper was a glance over the less-than-optimistic weather prospects, with its less than sunny prophecy backed up by a look towards the darker clouds moving into view.

And it always seems a little incongruous to entertain the thoughts of eating outdoors, dips in the sea and long nights of easy conversation and cicada song when summer and the start of rugby season can be mentioned in the same breath, the same sentence. And to make it worse, the Super 14 is set to kick off before we have seen too much of the longer form of the sport that is the traditional partner to summer, test cricket.

Ah yes, that flash of white on green, red on willow, played over five days, a result or maybe not; what better way to honour the lazy, long summer days when the sun beats down and time tends to flatten and lengthen, its pace dictated by the sun and interval between drinks.

Maybe the gods that control such things are angered by our ham-fisted attempt at changing the natural order of things. Maybe a summer that seems to start later and later into the year is their response to sports people in coloured clothing chasing an oval ball rather than a round one. And all a little too energetic and physical for this time of year.

It's a fit of pique, a divine denouncement of human meddling in time-honoured traditions.

Who knows, who cares? It's too hot to worry about such things when summer is later and later and the end point is an unknown day at some point in the future. Maybe after Womad. Maybe tomorrow.

In Taranaki, winter and the rain and cold it brings are a certainty, summer less so, which only increases its value and the importance of what we do with such an uncertain commodity.

Summer, indeed, is like life, you are never sure how much you are going to get, so it's vital you make the most of it.

Play on, Beaver. And pass another beer.

- © Fairfax NZ News