Reasons to be grateful...

It is summer. Yes it's hot but if it wasn't, we would be living somewhat more north than here. It would be much colder and we wouldn't have roses, bbqs, daisies, broad beans or a childish love for a paddling pool, be it in inflatable form or a mere bucket.

Yes it's sweaty and goodness, how can one sleep at night, but at least we're not shivering under a double duvet and 2 blankets rubbing our chilblains and dreading the morning stumble around in the pitch darkness of a gloomy chilly morning with a trenchant, icy swirl of wind and rain to look forward to.

We can:
1. Get up earlier and have so much more day.
2. Leave the house in roughly what we're wearing.
3. Eat outside, enjoying the greedy wheezes of the baby blackbirds while sipping a cool drink and eating something fabulously crisp and refreshing.
4. Enjoy salad - my preference is for a Thai dressing. Cooling in the extreme.
5. Sleep naked - so much sexier than having to devolve oneself of cumbersome pyjamas, socks and diving into bed, teeth chattering before getting warm.
6. Have seemingly endless evenings - how far the possibilities stretch when there's a golden sunset.
7. Drink rosé without scrunching up your face or feeling out of kilter.
8. Every weekend feels like a mini-break - no matter what you're doing, it's better with sunshine and even better horizontal in a chair with a bikini on.
9. Not worry about BO because everyone has it. Unless they're botoxed - and what is wrong with a good musky sweat up (this from the girl with no sense of smell...)
10. The colours, people, the colours. The sky is so endlessly blue, you could be anywhere in the world, but you're here, it's Wimbledon and could it be any better?

Let's be grateful we've got a summer. Now if they'd just cancel Glastonbury, we might get rid of torrential monsoons as well.