SUMMER. Summer? What? No. Not today, thank yooou.
I've still another month and a half before my seasonal pyjama-change.
I haven't worn-in my latest beret. It's completely off schedule.
Well you'll just have to postpone it, I'm not ready.
Until 2012 if it all possible, then the Olympics can be nice and sunny and I shall have moved to Aberdeen anyway to avoid tourists and rogue javelins.
I'm sorry, it just isn't convenient right now.
Wait...You'll have to tell Natasha Kaplinski to put her suit jacket back on and wait a bit.
I haven't hung the blackout curtains or decided on a new favourite flavour of Magnum.
I'm really very sorry but that's just the way it has to be. Your kids wouldn't have enjoyed it much anyway.
We all know sunshine causes the little darlings to malfunction.
Tell them I need time to decide on a sundress rotation scheme.
Tell them it wouldn't have been all it's cracked up to be anyway.
They'd have procured mammoth grass burns from slide-paddling-pool-Fairy-Liquid experiments in the first four hours, burnt their tongue getting it stuck to a Calippo and spent most of it looking like the ghost of Christmas past in three inches of sunblock.
Which flies would then get stuck in. Give them back their bobble hat and take them ice-skating.
I don't want to be a killjoy but there are practical reasons for not having it just yet.
Hobson's choiceMenfolk! What are they to do?
Have some sympathy for the poor creatures.
While you flit around in something floaty and flippy and nymphlike, they have the grand old Hobson's choice of: looking like a 10-year-old on a camping trip, in the eternally unsuccessful shorts/rucksack/trainers/big white socks combo, or the Country Casuals catalogue look, like a Tory minister having "quality family time" with his Cotswolds mistress, in lemon yellow polo shirt, khaki slacks, deck shoes and cricketing jersey thrown languidly around shoulders.
Or going all eco-warrier Neighbours-extra and getting their feet out in some linen trousered-flipflop disaster.
Spare the chaps a thought.
Keep them in jeans as long as possible.
Yes, please let's just forget it for now.
Ice popI have several months' worth of leftover casserole in the freezer, and I fully intend to enjoy it before I'm forced to switch to the threefold summer taste palate of ketchup, ice pop, and burnt.
I'm not nearly ready to wean myself off tights yet (five whole barelegged days managed last year, hoorah for me), and face the hellish plight with the other 97 odd percent of women whose thighs do actually meet in the middle, of walking any significant distance without friction burns.
Cycling shorts might be the answer, but I'm not prepared to investigate for at least another two months.
The elderly have the right attitude — ignore it completely and it might go away.
On Sunday, while everyone else sat cooking in their own perspiration and cultivated those red sunglasses marks either side of their noses, an old lady got on my bus looking the picture of cool defiance in a knitted woolly jumper, tucked neatly into a pair of fleecy tracksuit bottoms.
KnitwearSun? What sun? Old lady, I salute you.
So if they can ignore it, maybe we could, too.
We could all keep our tops on, continue eating soup, and support the British knitwear industry through these difficult months.
We could remain happily magnolia and resist all need to baste ourselves in self-tan until we look like a Wetherspoons turkey and gravy pub lunch.
We could finally admit that Frappucinos give us a dicky tummy for the rest of the afternoon, and that only Elle McPherson can wear kaftans, and that nobody in the population has very nice knees.
We could all do it together! "What do we want?" "No summer." "When do we want it?" "……um, we don't!"
Anybody with me? Didn't think so.
Enjoy that Calippo while I go and weep quietly into my thermals.
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