Like many other people I’ve always struggled to enjoy summer. In recent years, soaring temperatures have made summers uncomfortable and have brought climate anxiety to the forefront of my mind. However, even as a child, summer was an anxious season for me. Maybe it’s the boisterous and frenetic energy which seems to accompany hot weather – summer always seems too extroverted a season to be enjoyable. Maybe it’s the existential dread which seems to accompany lying still on the beach or at the pool. Maybe it’s the pressure to have a wonderful time and the niggling sensation that everyone else is doing summer better, taking advantage of sunsoaked possibilities for travel and adventure. Maybe it’s just the prospect of wearing shorts. There are too many crowds, parties and weddings, and there’s too much noise. If I sound like the Summertime Grinch right now, it’s because I am!

*Buttercups over the Stray in Harrogate.*

However, this year, I’ve decided to try and appreciate summer, rather than sitting the season out, as I usually do, and waiting for my anxiety to calm down again in September. I’d like to enjoy these warmer months and to find small, peaceful ways to celebrate and romanticize this time of year. So here are some ways which this autumn head (pumpkin head!) is planning to embrace the summer season…..

1. Ingesting unwise amounts of ice-cream on a weekly basis. My colleagues and I used to have a small bell in our office, akin to those found on the reception desks of old-fashioned hotels. Every Friday afternoon in summer, we’d ding it to announce the beginning of ice-cream hour and then head to the Italian place around the corner for a tubs of dark chocolate gelato and mango sorbet. We’d eat them on a shady bench in the park, under great big trees while listening to the Cathedral bells. Our bell was lost in an office move and some colleagues have also moved on, but I’m planning to reinstate this weekly tradition this year. A weekly ice-cream celebration can’t help but make you feel happy!

2. Having More Mini-Picnics. I do not usually enjoy the formal kind of picnic, with white blankets, sticky drinks and boxes of food which no-one ever finishes except for the wasps. However, this year, I’d like to embrace the more on the hoof variety of picnic; eating work-lunches underneath a favourite tree or sitting on sun-dappled grass and reading fairytales for fifteen minutes with coffee. Or boxing up my supper and taking it up to the stray to eat on a bench while watching the sunset. Ah, grinch, I hear you say, this is just eating outside, and you’d be right! But the micro-picnic injects a little slice of magic into your day with no extra planning involved. If I romanticize my lunchbreak, I’ve been fully present for at least this short time and have integrated a little more joy and beauty into my day.

3. Having sleepovers with friends. One excellent way to spend a long summer evening is to sit with your best friends in their fairy-lit back yard, drinking prosecco with Saint Germain and listening to Viktoria Mullova’s ‘Stradivarius in Rio’. You discuss plans and dreams and politics and put on big cardigans when there’s a slight chill in the air. You watch the stars come out into a sky which never fully gets dark. This activity is even better when your friends kindly let you stay on their couch and drink their excellent coffee in the morning, with the curtains drawn against the sun so that everyone can see the youtube videos of cats on the tv…. I’d really like to do this a couple of times this summer (if they’ll have me!)

4. Undertaking Summer Projects: If I’m not planning to head outside on bike rides to the coast or mess around in boats, the summer seems like a good time to stay inside and learn something. I’m planning to study Italian consistently over the next few months, maybe taking advantage of the light mornings to get up early and study peacefully in the sunshine. Of course, I’ll be dreaming of trips to Venice in foggy November, but summer seems like a good time to dig into a project. Conversely, I’d also like to head outside to start getting to know some of the trees!

5. Visiting Cathedrals. Cathedrals and smaller churches are nice and cold in the summertime, against the blazing heat, so ideal and peaceful places to be at this time of year. Plus, when I think about romanticizing summer, I always imagine the season in medieval landscapes. Perhaps it’s the result of growing up in an old landscape, or too many seasonal trips to Byland or Fountains Abbeys, but I like dreaming about pilgrims making their way down shaded lanes to Winchester or Canterbury, monks gathering herbs from their gardens and dawn sunlight pouring in through stained glass windows. Summer makes me want to visit ancient places and imagine the lives of their former inhabitants. So I plan to make some trips to Ripon Cathedral and Jervaulx Abbey this summer to wander amongst tombs and carvings and ruins and wildflowers and to soak up the atmosphere.