Nurofen puns downhill

Somehow, in my morning dream, I knew it was 1st August. In a dream shopping street somewhere – possibly Broad Street, Reading – I commented to my dream companion, “Would you believe it? August 1st, and Christmas decorations up already”. Well, it won’t be long, as they say.

Traditionally, in the early part of life, August is a dead month. After the intense scarlet of June and the blazing orange of July, the best we can hope for is a polluted murky magenta, or more likely a grey Deganwy day, one accompanied by the disgusting odour of sandy seaweedy bilingual  public conveniences /cyfleusterau and steamy plastic rainwear. August is the one month of the year that you don’t get to learn in French, août, ironically the one month for which it would be handy to have some advice on spelling and pronunciation. OK, it’s probably the sort of sound a rude French owl – owling in pain and in need of analgesia - would make (not so much a discreet aspirin as a silent aspirate, un hibou profane (oh, do shurrup – Ed.)). August is the hiatus between the long sweaty haul of revision and exams and the return, ideally on a refreshingly nippy September morning, to new intellectual challenges and opportunities.

At the start of this year I blogged complainingly about the discomfort involved in starting a new year, and in having to build it up out of nothing. By August, I’m comfortable in the year, and ready to enjoy coasting downhill again towards Christmas. Yes, I’m ready for that. Once September is out of the way time will speed up alarmingly through the all-too-brief season of getting serious again, of getting things done, of increasing soup frequency and decreasing salad obligations, more plausible excuses for comfort food, the lights coming on earlier and earlier and – eventually – before tea. Sodiumtime. Bliss.

 
August is the month for taking stock and recognising that one hasn’t done half the things one intended to during the year, but there’s still time … When panic finally kicks in it will be too late anyway, and at that point the projects that one really doesn’t want to undertake can be effortlessly deferred into next year. However, so far this year I feel smugly that I have attended to my blogging duties satisfactorily. And as for this week’s effort, well, that’s it.