Daydreaming of summer, somewhere
Forget your happy place. Where's your sunny one?
It’s the last day of April - happy birthday, Em! - and I speak for most of us, I think, in saying we could really do with this bank holiday sun sticking around for a while. When I started writing earlier in the week, the sunshine was still only pending. But I hope some of what follows holds true - along with the weather.
By now, our shoulders should have collectively de-hunched against the cold. We should be able to smell the streets again: the rubbish and the blossom. I should be back at the lido, posting the same pics Instagram reminds me I always post at this time of year (#startoftheseason). But while the Brockwell waters are a swimmable 13°C and rising, the outside temperature is anything but dependable.
And, honestly, doesn’t that sum up 2023? Or is that my own pending talking?
It's like we’re living through one big pathetic fallacy, an observation to make your English teacher happy, but not me. I don’t want April showers. I want hot hair™. You know the sensation, when you’ve been out in the sun long enough that the top of your head is warm to the touch. Few moments delight me more, and not just because I’m buried under a beanie or bobble for the rest of the year. Hot hair is a preview. A promise of the summer to come.
But first we need some spring and, here in the UK, ours went AWOL sometime in March.
Scientists are pretty clear what's behind this stop-start weather, of course. The same thing that’s behind the heatwaves of recent years. It’s the climate change, stupid. We can long for another summer like the one we got in 2018, when the sun camped out for weeks and Londoners got so relaxed they actually started talking to each other. And we may yet get one. But perhaps we should be looking for greener ways to find our fix.
How often are you told to think yourself into "your happy place”? Like most self-care advice (and, believe me, I saw a lot at HuffPost), it's easier shared than followed. Happiness rarely takes the same shape twice. So, how's this for an alternative: swap out happy for sunny. If you’re craving some heat, imagine yourself basking in it.
Now tell me: where did your mind just travel? Whatever your answer, this is your sunny space and you can revisit it as often as you like.
Mine is Sydney. The city where I lived for just 18 months, a full eight years ago now, occupies a disproportionate sweep of mental real estate (given my non-Sydney years number 40). I moved for work in July 2014 and left in December 2015, right at the start of my second Aussie summer. So maybe it's no surprise that one of my most recurrent daydreams is as simple as walking up and down its terraced streets in the sun.
You'd think it would be Sydney Harbour I fly to and sometimes I do, my bird's eye view soundtracked by Paul Kelly's Sydney from a 747. But the city is more than the sum of its (count them) fifty beaches. It’s the landlocked, humdrum daily routines I replay more often, in particular my old morning commute: a short 20-minute stroll from Darlinghurst to Surry Hills.
Out of my art deco apartment block I go, round the corner of Clapton Place and on to Forbes Street, past the jacaranda trees (or icing-like frangipani, depending on the month), birds squawking at a pitch and volume I never don’t notice. The skies are lavender blue against the honey-coloured facade of the National Art School as I wait (and wait…) to cross Oxford Street - “pip, pip, pip, pip” - before reaching the rainbow flags of Taylor Square, the heart of Sydney’s gay district.
There - at least in my mind - is the big pink and blue building, emblazoned with the words: “Always Was, Always Will Be”. According to a quick Google street view, it no longer exists, swallowed up by Sydney's hunger for redevelopment. That doesn't make the slogan any less true. The ground beneath my feet belongs to its traditional owners, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. Always was, always will be theirs.
In my daydream, my legs are bare, my sunglasses a fixture even at this time of day, and - hand to head - yes, my hair is definitely hot. I order from the nice barista at Cafe Mo’s on Campbell Street and continue to the bench at James Hilder Reserve, minutes away from the Guardian Australia office. There, I sit out my remaining time, caffeinating, before heading into the 9am news meeting.
Only it isn’t 9am where I am, it's 9pm, and I'm not in sunny Sydney, but in rainy London, on the sofa in our flat.
Daydreaming. Better for you, better for the planet. When we were young, we got told off for drifting into reverie, the implication being: focus on the here and now. Recent research is more open to its benefits. A 2021 study in the journal Emotion defines daydreaming as “thinking for pleasure”, and something that actually requires practice. It can boost your creativity and focus, help relieve anxiety, and improve your tolerance of pain. At the same time, there's a growing understanding of maladaptive daydreaming, too much of which makes us less able to cope with real life, as these articles in the New Scientist and Observer discuss.
I see the distinction. More than once, in the wake of heartbreak, I’ve lost months to the fantasy of rekindling the doomed romance, precious time I could have spent moving on with my own life. But Australia is not a case of loved-and-lost. Now I have it in my hinterland, it’s going nowhere and neither need I. If I want to bake in the Aussie sunshine, I can think myself there.
These daydreams mirror the surreal ‘space-time’ of my ex-pat experience. Seconded to Sydney, I felt keenly the 11/12-hour time difference from family and friends in the UK, who were rarely awake when I was (and vice versa). But I didn’t mind the 10,000 mile gap. I knew it was temporary. Now it's the inverse: I can message my Aussie acquaintances any time of the day should I wish, but those 10,000 miles? They feel impossibly vast and, thanks to life, pending, currently only bridgeable in my mind.
Here is what I've learned, though. There is a way to live in two different places at once. It’s in the routines and habits I brought home with me from Sydney: the swims, the walks, my Aussie vowels and, yes, the flat whites. And it’s also in how I define home.
Ever wondered why I tag my Instagram posts the way I do? People from Sydney self-ID as Sydneysiders (a convict slur reclaimed, if you're interested), thus #sydneyside. And in London, this becomes #londonside, because I will always experience life here in relation to my home from home on the other side of the world.
Places change you. I’d love to hear where your sunny space is, now I’ve shared mine. And as a coda: I can confirm it's not always sunny in Australia (whatever Neighbours had us believe). Sydney has as many rainy days a year as London. And who knows, if this weather does hold out today, I might even get a lido swim in before the end of April. Talk about having my Rocky Road and eating it! #sydneyside #londonside #startoftheseason
While I wait this week
I’m celebrating: 100 days of Johnny, son to my Sydney friends Liz and Bill. Baby J has been in NICU since he was born at 26 weeks, meaning they have been, too. NICU is the ultimate pending, but Johnny is making brilliant progress and we all hope he’ll be home with them soon. Sending love to these brilliant parents and humans!
I’m marvelling: at Milk, the latest science / art show at the Wellcome Collection, which I guzzled up on Thursday. Plenty on the politics of motherhood and nutrition and interesting in the week ‘Big Milk' hit the news for its latest ad campaign.
I'm feeling revived: By bluebells. Turns out spring did turn up after all. In Kent.
