Missing things past

Nearer Than Heaven [acoustic] by Delays from the album Faded Seaside Glamour

I said I didn’t miss England at all, but I think I do a little bit. I miss its sense of humour, the newspapers, the BBC and most of all, I miss the summers. What?!? But it’s ‘summer’ all year round in Malaysia. Yes, but it’s not the same summer.

Visitors always make jokes about the miserableness of the weather, but I usually shrug and say that it’s not bad really. It was more of a survival mechanism perhaps, because if you live there 11 out of the 12 months of the year, moaning about the weather isn’t going to help you get through it. It was a case of putting your head down and getting on with it.

Summer was always good, and the transition to summer was better. It was the way it slowly crept up on you until it tapped you on the shoulder like an unexpected friend; the days got longer, the temperature turned warmer, even the air smelled different. If the wind was right, I could smell the salt blowing in from the Irish Sea. The blue of the sky seemed endless, lulling you into believing summer would stretch forever. Everybody smiled a lot more, and even though garish colours on pasty white English skin looks awful, everybody on the whole looked and felt a lot better.

We’d go out to the park nearby and toss a Frisbee around that we got free during induction week and had been keeping in anticipation of summer. There would be a barbecue nearly every weekend at somebody or other’s house, or a huge gathering in a recreational park where there would be enough food to last you a week, much less at one sitting. A net would be set up and a volleyball or a football would be tossed around. Inevitably, someone would make a prat of themselves by falling into a pond.

When we got bored of the city, we’d pool our money, rent the cheapest car available, pick a point on the map and head there. If money was a problem, we’d make do with short excursions using DK’s boyfriend’s car, which you nearly always had to get out and push. That is if you weren’t gassed to death with carbon monoxide while you were sitting in it.

If it got too hot outdoors, we’d retreat inside and keep all the sash windows open. In my old student house, you could sit on the wide ledge outside the window and watch people pass by three storeys below. You’d have to watch where you put your feet though, because one of the housemates had planted strawberries in a little trough on the ledge. We were all waiting for the green little fruits to ripen and you didn't want to be the one to have stuck your giant foot in it.

Our green thumb would not extend to flowers so someone would have bought flowers and it’d sway prettily in the breeze. Meals would be had sitting by the windows. There would be plenty of cold drinks, cans of lychee and melons in the fridge.

You could do what a lot of English do and cheer Tim Henman on to win Wimbledon, even though you know that no way in hell he would. Or you could switch to the live telecast of the various music festivals going on – Glastonbury, Reading, Isle of Wight, T in the Park – and dance to that. Until your neighbours downstairs start banging on the ceiling. Then you’d whip the acoustic guitar out and have a big sing-along-session, or play a drinking game where the loser has to stand on the ledge outside and sing Negaraku. That is, until your neighbours downstairs start banging on the ceiling. Which is when they wisen up and bring their guitar along for a jamming session but give up once they realise that you are a lousy musician and know only four chords on the guitar.

When you get tired of mucking about, you can put the cricket on and let it lull you to sleep on the sofa. When you wake up later, it's still light outside so you can wonder down to the local kedai runcit and get yourself an ice cream.

But all good things must come to an end. The days get shorter, the wind nippier, the clothes lose their colour and before you know it, it's winter and you're kicking yourself for not leaving the country and wailing about how totally miserable you are and how much you hate this rotten place. That is, until summer comes around again and you get a sudden case of amnesia because everything on this wet, rocky island is beautiful once more.