An English Summer

[gma]

I know that I my offering will get roundly trounced on this topic but I am wondering what the most bizarre sights and signs of our English summer are amongst the great and the good on this forum!!

My starter for ten is:

Went to look at the barbecue this last 'lovely' mid-August weekend, which to date has spent the entire summer in it's raincoat (mostly due to the weather but also frantic weekends), and found a family of frogs living very happily underneath the rack on the bottom; compact and bijou, set out very nicely with a little pile of damp leaves in one corner, a handy spider's web above and a slug highway running right past the front door. We have no pond in our garden and neither do any of our neighbours, (the last one gave up two years ago after constant use of it by the herons as their personal 'dive-thru' McDonalds').

[J.R.]

Our strangest sight of summer ?

We came downstairs this morning at 7:00 to find a mole running around our living room !

[Vonny]

I saw a big round shiny thing in the sky one day last week

[kerrensimmonds]

The pathetic little squeaky sound of a 'baby' (ha ha) seagull. Huge hunched grey thing toddling up and down the roof of the bungalow behind my house (the nest must be other side, against the chimney stack) - and the squawking and screaming of its parents as they try to protect it from predators and encourage it to learn to fly. My cats sit in my bedroom window, mesmerised. Sometimes I (wickedly?) try to copy the squawking of one of the parents and it's quite funny to see it turn its head towards my house and respond....

[CHAZ]

Well can I put an entry even if I don't live in England?

Luxemburg this morning at 7am...I open the windows to be confronted by mist, rain and a sizzling 12°....oh where
has summer gone this mid August....

How I do miss the sound of leather and willow.....

[Ajarn Philip]

How I do miss the sound of leather and willow.....

Never mind, you've got billowing weather...!

[blondie95]

my dad determined to bbq on saturday out in his mac, with the umbrella up and windbreakers around the bbq...passing the cooked food through the kitchen window his family who were having a good chat and a drink in the warmth and dry!

[kerrensimmonds]

Thanks for a good laugh, Amy. How very typical of an English summer.....
I have friends with one of those posh gas barbecues, and who insist on barbecuing ALL food in the summer. Most nights they huddle under the gazebo.....wearing jumpers and with umbrellas at the ready. But it is so good to cook and eat and drink outside on an English summer evening..... I Don't Think So!!

[Angela Woodford]

Our strangest sight of summer ?

We came downstairs this morning at 7:00 to find a mole running around our living room !

How exciting! Brought in by a cat? And still able to run about? A most resilient creature!

[J.R.]

Quite so Angela ! We think it was Toby who usually collects large leaves and isn't a killer.

Jan took him out to the end of the garden and he scuttled away.

Sadly - Reagan must have found him again in the early hours of this morning and presented him, deceased, at the foot of our stairs !

[Angela Woodford]

R I P - poor mole!

[sejintenej]

Thanks for a good laugh, Amy. How very typical of an English summer.....
I have friends with one of those posh gas barbecues, and who insist on barbecuing ALL food in the summer. Most nights they huddle under the gazebo.....wearing jumpers and with umbrellas at the ready. But it is so good to cook and eat and drink outside on an English summer evening..... I Don't Think So!!

A previous dentist (he went private) living in England actually insisted on having a brai (BBQ in English) every single weekend - even when there was snow lying on the ground. What these South Africans get up to beggars the imagination.......

[midget]

The only good thing about this weather is that so far we haven't been subjected to the horrible smell of other people's BBQ

[kerrensimmonds]

Oh no? Someone round here was barbecuing onions on Sunday night. The stench was disgusting......!!

[blondie95]

it was a proper charcoal bbq out in the rain and i for one love the smell