here comes the summer...

It's really started to feel like summer in this particular corner of the East Midlands over the last couple of days. The sun has been out pretty much all weekend, and although it hasn't been particularly hot, it has been nice to dust off my sunglasses and to leave my coat and my umbrella at home for a change. I even attended a splendid BBQ on Saturday, of all things.....

At the risk of sounding like Bill Oddie (albeit a rather taller, thinner and less hairy version), it has also been nice to see the nicer weather bring out some of our more welcome summer visitors.



Firstly, I had to rescue a bumblebee from the kitchen, where he was rather indignantly headbutting the window and wondering why he wasn't bobbing lazily above some flowers. I like bumblebees: they're such friendly looking things, aren't they? Apparently they are in some danger of extinction though, so I was more than happy to rescue this little chap and to set him loose in the garden, where he buzzed away sluggishly on his silly little wings and slowly disappeared up into the blue skies (a bumblebee's wings, of course, have been scientifically proven as being insufficient to enable them to fly. According to these learned people, a bumblebee only manages to fly under "the power of its own arrogance". It's the obvious solution to an otherwise intractable problem....)

I was out in the garden again a little later on when I spotted some birds swooping and soaring above the suburban rooftops.



They were Swifts, back from their winter quarters in the tropics to enjoy the few brief weeks that we somewhat laughably call our summer (if it was me, I reckon I'd stay in the tropics. Why bother with all the dangerous hassle of a migration?) I suppose they could have been swallows.... but I reckon they were too big to be swallows, and I used to be in the YOC, so I'm prepared to stick my neck out over this).

I don't think there is any other bird that manages to make flying look like quite so much fun.

Mind you, I was soon reminded that not everything summer brings is so welcome: I popped into town and was confronted by the sight of loads of gnarly footed men wearing flip-flops.

Swings and roundabouts, swings and roundabouts.