Summer loving
2018 – the year you’ll never forget
It’s one of life’s immutable laws that anticipation and reality rarely match up. A long-planned holiday can be a disaster, hundreds of dates can come and go without a spark, and a much-trumpeted Big Night Out can end with everyone in bed with a cup of cocoa by 10.30pm. Conversely, a last-minute trip can be magic, you can meet your soulmate in the frozen food aisle, and a post-work drink can end at dawn having painted the town red.
So, too, has been the story of this summer: something from which no one expected anything, and yet which has turned out glorious in almost every way. Two things tend to make summers memorable: the weather, and major sporting events. We’ve had heatwaves before (2013, 2003, 1976) and tournaments (the 2012 Olympics, Euro 96, the World Cup in 1966); but this year, the two have combined.
We had the longest, greyest winter imaginable: the snow was still falling as late as March 18. Exactly one month later, we had the hottest April day on record: 84F (29C) in London. A month later, the sun blazed down as Meghan Markle wed Prince Harry. It was as though a switch had been flicked. Spring? Who needs spring? And the heatwave has scarcely let up since. A nation obsessed with grumbling about the weather has rejoiced in it. People have smiled at each other in the street, stood chatting outside pubs, walked with heads higher. The sunshine has, in general, brought out the best in us. To paraphrase Albert Camus: who would have believed in the midst of winter that there was, around the corner, an invincible summer?
As for the football, that was equally unexpected. After the years of hype and disappointment, this lot – young, inexperienced, untried – weren’t given a prayer. But even when they started to win, it wasn’t so much what they did as how they did it. For once, an England team was worth supporting not on the nebulous grounds of our sharing a passport with them, but because they were palpably a good bunch. They helped resurrect the values of decency, integrity, teamwork, good humour. They worked hard for themselves, but more importantly for each other. They were funny (Jesse Lingard’s Instagram posts) and generous with their time (Dele Alli Facetiming a reporter’s 11-year-old son and chatting about the computer game Fortnite with him).
They were a genuine collective devoid of prima donnas. They were way more than the sum of their parts, because they lifted each other up rather than dragging each other down. And in all this was a message of hope: if they can make the best of what they have, if they can overcome and succeed beyond expectation, then why can’t we?
“We are a team that represents modern England, and in England we’ve spent a bit of time being a bit lost as to what our modern identity is,” Gareth Southgate, the England manager, said. “Of course, first and foremost I will be judged on football results. But we have a chance to affect other things that are even bigger.”
And they did indeed. In an increasingly atomised age, it was rather lovely to know that literally half the country was watching something together, going through the wringer together. It was, as the youth say, all about the feels: enough to make this a collective memory, a warm glow when, in years to come, someone will mention “the summer of 2018” and everyone will smile.
They’ll remember lying on the grass in the park at sundown, and it being still hot enough not to have needed “a jumper for later”, as your mum always cautioned.
They’ll remember waking up day after day to find the air warming fast. They’ll remember having to walk the dogs at dawn or dusk because otherwise it was too hot. They’ll remember the smell of a thousand barbecues. They’ll remember beaches and ice cream and suntan oil. They’ll remember the giant photo album that was Instagram, millions of images proving that, yes, this really happened.
They’ll remember the roar like a chemical explosion every time England scored and being drenched by flying beer and not caring.
They’ll remember being captivated by something happening far away: the extraordinary heroism of volunteer cave divers in Thailand and the equally extraordinary resilience of a dozen trapped teenage boys and the young monk in charge of them.
They’ll remember living in a country that had, for the two years before, been a fractious, divided kingdom, and which suddenly found itself united and scarcely caring about the politics. The Chequers showdown, the resignations of David Davis and Boris Johnson – yeah, yeah, but what time’s the football on?
They’ll remember that the combination of glorious weather, a decent football team and a shambolic government meant that we had basically turned into Italy.
And they’ll remember all this because this summer is the kind of summer about which people will write books and sing songs and make films. It will inspire its own
Atonement, its own Sunny Afternoon, its own Life Is Sweet.
This solidarity, this togetherness that we have felt: it’s not nothing, no matter how ephemeral it proves. It’s something. It’s more than something. This summer will soon be over. Be sad when it goes. But be much, much happier that it happened at all.
Boris Starling is author of Bluffer’s Guide to Brexit, £6.99
‘We’ve had heatwaves and major sporting events before – but this year, the two have combined’