Summer Started Today at 12:54pm

Some count summer starting with the solstice or the predictability of Test Match rain, but for me, the season begins with my first cream tea of the year. It has to be the proper thing though. A scone with just the right amount of crumbliness; strawberry jam rich in ripe fruit flavour, not just a sugary red spread and clotted cream, real clotted cream. Not some facsimile which has never seen a shallow pan. Oh, and it has to be washed down with a cup of tea just the right shade of kiln-baked orange clay.

By this reckoning, summer started today at 12:54pm. It happened while I sat in the brick-vaulted crypt of St John’s in Smith Square. No sunlight disturbed the depths of the finest English Baroque footstool in the land, but as the taste of the cream tea filled my mouth, my soul was dreaming blue skies and lying on green grass while skin was butterfly kissed by a warm breeze.