don't waste time

If there's one thing I've learnt living in this city, it's:

1) Never ever take advantage of sun. When it shines, you drop everything you're doing to get outside. And you fucking hurry. You don't know how long you've got.

(Optional 2nd): You can squeeze a coffee table into a space smaller than an actual toilet. On its side. When you live in London, you learn what it means to create space out of nothing. And bend the rules of science.

Back to the point.

So, the Brit and I were hosting a traditional roast dinner (dinner is at 2pm, not 8pm like it sounds like it should be) for some friends at our house. We were cooking. He was cooking, actually, I was laying. The table.

So after buying a wodge of groceries and heading back up the hill to our flat, suddenly, the sun, she was reborn. It's been a Biblical age since I last saw the actual sun, so when it emerged from this grey mess of a sky, there was much exuberance and frenzied fishing for Ray Bans at the bottom of handbags and sage gasps of disbelief.
(Even some confusion as to whether it was the moon? Or was it the sun? All round, shiny discs in the sky look the same to me these days.)

As we headed up to our flat, holding bags of shopping, we walked through a little park behind our house. A small stretch of green, normally empty, bar a bench or two, and a few rambunctious dogs running amuck and pooing.

Had we gone home to unpack the groceries and fannied about, who knows how much we'd miss? No. You can't mess around here. Bugger the rest of the afternoon's plans - lie in the fucking sun or be an idiot.

Dropped our bags. Took off our jerseys. Lay in the park, spreadeagled, in the grass, staring up at the sun and clouds for hours on end. Stuff the shit that needed to go into the fridge par urgence. Sun is more important, and sun is rare. Drop bags and absorb the warmness on the face. Actual real warmness, not the radiator. Immediately.

Actual. Sunlight.

The caviar went off, but totes don't give a damn.

Yes. It has been this bad. And yes it has affected my mood. But this is what happens here. It'll be crap for weeks on end, and then out of nowhere it's like Gabriel descends from heaven and flings his sunny semen all over the UK, and once again order is restored.

Everyone smiles again, and everyone's shirt comes off. Brits peel away all of their clothes when the sun shines. Not just their choonky joompers, their clothes down to the bare minimal. Brits aren't Germans, so they'll keep on one layer extra over their actual underpants, and you'll rarely see them naked unless they're wasted, but they still show an inordinate amount of flesh.

It's mostly quite a horrific sight.

But! At least everyone is happy and joyous, and sometimes even gay. One day of sun is a lifeline here. Convincing everyone that it's going to be OK. Don't throw yourself off that balcony, because look. It's all better. Don't throw the toaster in the bath just yet, because that 24 hours of sun will have you asking why you were ever about to consider it.

It takes just one day. We had sun the whole weekend, and as a result, got elegantly wasted. It is one's God given duty to celebrate after such a sun drought.