Harry Bell

There is much to celebrate in the summer of 2016, says an inspired

Afew weeks back, the summer awoke from its easy slumber. The tyranny of mournful winter had been broken, and the spring lie-in which extended well into June brought to a satisfying end.

We needed it. We spend our days counting the days until summer arrives and when it eventually comes it leaves us underwhelmed, a fleeting blast of heat, and then it’s gone.

Not this year. Canterbury has been enjoying a glorious summer. There is no better time to live in this magnificent city.

The streets are crowded, the parks full, the pavement cafes and pubs packed.

When summer arrives, this city becomes a single giant open space, the buildings like hedgerows, the parks its blooming flowers, the people its pollinators.

My stroll through the Westgate Gardens late afternoon on Sunday finds it fizzing with joyous life. The gardens’ beauty is announced by the rows of plants and flowers either side of the Stour. They look more resplendent than ever.

Inside a hatted man strums idly on a guitar, a family toss a frisbee around, a punt floats gracefully down the river, the feet of children padding on a million blades of luscious grass. Some people just lie on the grass, eyes closed, a temporary retreat from the world outside.

The pace of life has slowed. No longer hastening to avoid the rain and cold things appear before us we might not have noticed.

A short trot from the gardens is St Peter’s Roundabout. It is a riot of verdant plant life, of trees and flowers. Suddenly, I realise Canterbury is home to the most attractive roundabout there is.

In the city centre the Cathedral, which animates all life here, rises with majestic pride into the blinding sky. This building of impossible beauty is turned golden by the burning sun.

Below it, the streets are abuzz. Drinkers outside the Bell and Crown pub sit in sight of the Cathedral. No pub better celebrates the genius of Canterbury and its glorious past.

And yet all the while the miserabilists tell us how awful life is. Snarling and perpetually angry at a world they cannot love, they tell us everything is rubbish, the economy is a crock, they complain that the city isn’t busy enough or obsess about racism and moan when a piece of litter goes uncollected.

We’ll leave them to the wreckage of empty lives they have to fill with despair.

The history books will one day tell us that summer 2016 was the moment when the little people of England rose up and gave a domineering and disdainful establishment a bloody nose over the EU but it’s a more than that. The summer sun and warmth is bringing us a little piece of heaven.

There is truly no better time to be an Englishman living in Canterbury and there is no better time to recall the words of John of Gaunt from Richard II: This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,

Westgate Gardens

Outside the Bell and Crown in Palace Street; the terrace by