[day 5 of a summer of substack]
Today, I buy strawberries from the little shop on the corner because Me From Two Weeks Ago set a goal to bake something with strawberries, and I’ll be damned if I let her down. As I find the recipe1, I pop one in my mouth. Strawberries are a picnic staple, a summer fruit. I can taste the smoke of the barbecue now, citronella and chocolate cake and cucumber. Someone’s playing Foo Fighters on a tinny bluetooth speaker, the juice from the bitten-off ends of the strawberries seeps into my paper plate.
My birthday is in the summer. I always used to brag about it. Whenever my friends at school would bring in sweets to hand out to the class, I’d usually tease them. Imagine being born in the holidays, you’d get to keep all the chocolate for yourself… The idea of a summer birthday is heaven to most kids. Three whole months off school and you get new toys and you get to go on holiday? What’s the downside?
Summer has always been my least favourite season. I love autumn. I love the new beginning that it symbolises, the start of a school year, the warm air of September, the ways the leaves turn crunchy and the cold snap you can feel in the air as the year winds down. I can hear We’re Going To Be Friends by The White Stripes play every time the season rolls around. Winter is a time for staying in. I prefer the cold to the heat. Hot chocolates, and new year, and bells, and the smell of Christmas crackers. Spring rain in the UK is miserable, but it waters the grass, and when the sun peeks out through the clouds, the flowers stand up taller.
Then summer. A change of routine. In recent years, now that I know what my brain gets like with a lack of purpose, I have tried to keep myself busy. I attempt to occupy myself with books and writing and baking things. I see my friends, even when they’re not around.
The other day in London I took pictures of everything in the city that reminded me of my friends, to send to them later. I never did. They still sit in my camera roll, unexpressed little letters of love. I make a cup of tea, and the pictures of me and my friend on the mug smile up at me as I pour the water. The handle is blue, like the boygenius song. It feels good to be known so well.
It’s raining outside, now. Heavily. It’s the rain of the mornings before school, greeting everyone who had walked from the bus stop with their blazers over their heads, the masses of people stood by the radiators, congregations brushing their hair in the bathroom and bending their necks under the hand dryer. It’s the air of an April morning in Spanish class when a girl said she wished it would snow, and it did twenty minutes later. She called herself a witch for the rest of the day. It’s the smell of the summer I was lucky enough to visit America and stood underneath a shop canopy watching the warm rain hit the tarmac. It’s the rain in the story where two of my friends first meet each other, come to my room to chat and escape the downpour, and are dry by the time they leave. I made them tea then.
I’ve always joked that making tea is my love language. I suppose if we’re talking about traditional love languages it would sit somewhere in the middle of a Venn diagram between acts of service and gift-giving. And perhaps quality time. Tea is an invitation to stay, to talk whilst it cools, to chat about everything and nothing in particular whilst you cradle the mug in your hands and absorb its heat. Tea brings forward the types of conversations that you can’t recall afterwards other than the vague feeling of warmth. It’s my way of dealing with every emotion possible. I had a whole tea station on my shelves at university, and the first thing out of my mouth was usually ‘do you want a tea?’. I think if I ever get a fancy doorbell, I might customise it to say that. Or put it on the welcome mat.
Almost every corner of my room is filled with trinkets. The top of my mirror is populated by gifts and little objects from the people I love. I have a whole drawer full of old birthday and Christmas cards. My corkboards at university changed every term, becoming a guestbook of all the people that passed through my doors. I still hold on to the messages. I have always been a sentimental person. I think quite deeply that the things we make for other people mean far more than anything we can buy. It’s the thought, a labour of love. Not quite labour, I don’t like the connotations of burden that the word gives. Instead, the work of loving, the good work. Memory woven into handmade crocheted hearts, or painted on to little watercolour portraits.
Love and baking are similar. Baking these biscuits sends me back to October, the cookies that I made just before I arrived at university, and the Taskmaster and Ghosts watch-parties where they’d be eaten. Now I make these biscuits for myself, folding in the sweetness of summer. The mixture gets jammy as I ball the dough on to the baking trays. They go in the oven, and I have fifteen minutes to reflect.
Maybe this year is the year I learn to love summer. I’ll revisit my younger self, the childlike playfulness of ice lollies and strawberries, the scramble for coins as the ice cream truck blares past. It’s been the same tune since I can remember, the Match Of the Day theme. I’ll watch the Euros with my dad, and understand less about it than I did at age seven. I’ll go outside, barefoot, to cut the rosemary, and let my cats chase me. I will see my friends. I will see them everywhere!
I think I will grow to love summer. I can imagine myself in the future making the most of the weather and the time, still baking and still putting the kettle on. She will have friends over, and they’ll drink tea on her front porch, watching the light July rain come down. A summer kind of love, one of little gifts and love letters, songs and sweet berries and calls in the middle of the afternoon. A kind of love expressed in a picnic spread, a small barbecue illuminated by fairy lights and the moon, scrawling down some more messages for the guest book.
I’ll buy the strawberries from the little shop on the corner, and I’ll bake myself some biscuits.
eat some strawberries. write a letter. make some tea. come back soon.
— r <3
PS: here are the biscuits.
here’s the recipe! The biscuits came out tasting great, like scones in biscuit form. Would recommend with some cream, or white chocolate chips!