The Last Day of Summer
Summer was meant to be for shaking off the dust. But God has forsaken us to tepid grey, aside from these last few days.
Walking up Parliament Hill with a brown paper bag full of peaches and plums, the sweet summer air bristles with its end; I’m listening to Evil Ways by Santana because real summer is for dad jams. Buzz cut labourers rush past carrying at least two different kinds of energy drink and a scowl, their own mini seasons of sugar highs and lows. Whereas I’m underemployed, stopping work at 2pm. I’m not going to the poetry reading, it’s the last day of summer and I want to swim.
The men’s pond is full. Well, half-empty, but they’ve introduced a booking system, citing covid restrictions to exclude people, classic City of London behaviour (they own the ponds, which is not that weird when you consider its occupants once owned half the world). The guy with the card machine and greasy hair has told those without bookings to come back in thirty minutes. An incensed posh man walks through anyway; it’s amazing where the bluster of entitlement will get you. Two pale skateboarders applaud him. He’s right, the booking system is stupid; we should all be storming through. And his trousers are a nice fit, best look good if you’re gonna be an arsehole.
Further along the Heath hundreds line the banks of that weird fishing lake. Drill beats skipping in syncopated lament, a boy in an Armani Exchange tracksuit with a perm does wheelies up and down the path (boys on road doing massive wheelies will always be amazing). I sit down, eat my donut peach, and eaves drop.
Crowds of teenage stoner ‘safe fam’ boys puff skunk joints in bucket hats, a shirtless multiracial rebellion, plonked right next to waves of party gays swearing profusely; the one group nearest me are arguing about Gabrielle’s greatest hit, none naming the too obvious ‘Dreams’, also all shirtless, all muscular in a way I can’t sustain longer than a panic attack. Around them, women sunbathe, everyone gossiping and everyone eavesdropping. The odd lone pervert pretends to read a book. The capital city on a sumptuously hot day, there’s always people everywhere, miraculous in their unspeakable differences. It’s still a constant relief to be around others in leisure, even total strangers.
Lockdown London was, it’s fair to say, not her best self but the rush back to reality has been like trying to relax on a half-inflated lilo in a damp attic. Whatever stage of the pandemic we’re in now, I’ve no clue. People look tired, and you really can’t force it. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but at least round where I live, compliance with pandemic protocols is messy (well, they aren’t really rules anymore are they?), with mostly only neurotic WFH types and older people adhering. Everyone else has nearly given up and fair enough. Deep in grief, the third lockdown was probably one of the worst periods of my life, and I was just stuck at home, not working in Tescos or for Deliveroo or in a meat packing factory. And what is there to show for it? Even more dead and a huge transfer of state money to more friends of the government.
Summer was meant to be for shaking off the dust. But God has forsaken us to tepid grey, aside from these last few days.
The inhabitants of the heath, in the last days of summer, on a Wednesday afternoon, are the perennially underemployed and the hedonistically listless, all those addicted to the close comfort of others, who’d rather be dead when life’s not convivial, who never want to work for someone else or for pittance again; the teenagers are grungy, angular lanks, making beach bum early noughties brands fashionable again. I am delighted to be proven old.
There is a delicious irony in this heat wave falling during the working week: for it is these perennially underemployed freaks and perverts, stressed out freelancers, the teenagers, the bums, the stoners who inherit the sun-baked capital, blessing it with libations of Monster energy, cheap lager, prosecco and poppers. Against the rules: A handful of teenagers all jump in the fishing pond: “Oi, it’s alright if your feet don’t touch the bottom.” No park warden comes to tell them off, so more join them.
I go back to the men’s pond and the guy with greasy hair lets half of a dozen of us in, even though the pond’s quota is full. He doesn’t even want any money, another small act of rebellion. Thanks greasy haired guy!
Swimming, I wonder when the weight of uncollected commercial rents and the consequences of the crisis of employment and the costs of Brexit will come crashing down on us. In enjoyment, everyone knows in their heart we need to rest, before whatever comes next. And Hampstead Heath is an image of a city in struggle deferred; in rest it’s the summer London could have had all the way, free from the constant enclosures of shitty jobs and bad bosses and rent and the constant fuckry of the government.