Photo from the Oliver archive

I’m sure we all remember that feeling of waking up on that first morning of the long summer holiday from school, and how to our young brains it seemed as if we were free with endless days of leisure stretching out in front of us when the sun always shone and life was like an Enid Blyton story (without the racism) with bike rides and picnics and the chimes of the ice-cream van ringing in our ears. We were safe to roam because we didn’t know what a paedophile was in those days (we had to buy our own sweets) and we knew when it was time to go indoors as the chorus of motherly voices calling out that it was time to eat. Our signal to go home to bed was nightfall. A victorious jump of the BMX over a makeshift ramp would be met with vocal congratulations, no clicking on a ‘like’ button for us.

My sister’s birthday is seven days before mine, and it is at that point that time started to speed up again. Suddenly we were shopping for school uniforms and stationary and a sense of dread hung in the air like old cigarette smoke. My birthday would be the last hurrah of summer, and life would return to normal.

As an adult we look back at summer in much the same way that we look back at Christmas, through glasses so rose-tinted it is a wonder we see anything at all. Did the sun really shine every day? Of course it didn’t.

It is my birthday today and I decided on the minimum amount of fuss. At the age of thirty eight I simply couldn’t be arsed with it. The child in these photographs didn’t worry about how his career was panning out, he didn’t worry about bills, he didn’t have depressive bouts that involved thoughts of suicide, he didn’t have back trouble, and he genuinely enjoyed summer. If the child in the photos knew what was in store for him it would have really pissed on his picnic. I can’t remember worrying about anything more pressing than getting home from school in time for Grange Hill. Actually that is inaccurate because one thing I can remember being worried about was solar powered calculators. I had a solar powered calculator and once I had used it I would put something over it (a towel perhaps) because I was scared that if people left them on it would use up valuable sunlight and one day our lack of mathematical ability would cause the world to be plunged into darkness. Sometimes I envy my younger self because I can’t remember that happiness, when did it go wrong?

I opened my cards this morning and (because this is the modern world) checked my personal Facebook account to read the greetings that were written on my wall. After that I boarded the tram and spent the day in court working (I didn’t encourage fuss as I hate forced workplace jollity, only three people knew it was my birthday and I asked them to keep it quiet). There was a time when I wouldn’t work on my birthday but the day doesn’t excite me anymore. When I got home I had some nice presents to open; my dad bought me the album Going Back Home by Wilko Johnson and Roger Daltrey, and from Mandi I received Saving Mr. Banks on DVD, Me:Moir by Vic Reeves, and best of all the first series of Happy Days on DVD. We are saving the birthday niceties for the weekend as we both work during the week, and after that the summer will be over.

Photo from the Oliver archive

The old saying is wrong; schooldays are not the happiest days of your life, school holidays are.

===

My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

Listen to The Sunday Alternative here

All donations received via the PayPal button above will be used to fund creative projects such as podcasts, short films, documentaries, comedy sketches and a whole lot more. You are under no obligation of course, but thanks in advance if you do drop something in the pot.