Summer's Almost Gone

“Summer’s almost gone
Summer’s almost gone
We had some good times
But they’re gone
The winter’s comin’ on
Summer’s almost gone”

The Doors

The Ammonyte sat on the verandah, glass of single malt wrapped by a tentacle, staring out across the garden with the dahlias flowering in the watery September sun. “What times we had” he mused, “What times we had”.

Gently rocking back and forth in his chair he cast his mind back to the early excitement of summer and the burst of colour it brought forth after a long and cold winter, everything new, fresh, vibrant.

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He then let his mind roam across the sport he had witnessed from the Oval…

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…to Lords and back again…

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…and shed silent tears of rage that some of the cricket may not have been all that it had seemed.

As a creature of the water, he recalled with particular pleasure the almost Edwardian day at Henley, watching the Royal Regatta from the Stewards’ Enclosure where braying men in stripey blazers got loudly drunk while oarsmen and scullers laboured against the flow of the river, and pretty fillies wafted by in floaty dresses (though not too short because they would have not passed muster)

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The Ammonyte then let his mind wander to the silence of the remote valleys of the Lake District

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and the sounds of the Maryport Blues Festival

Friday

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Saturday

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Sunday

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and finally to wandering the ripening fields

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