The sun

"Sunshine, everybody loves the sunshine" lilted the certifiably adequately titled Roy Ayer's track Sunshine.

I certainly love the sunshine. Can't get enough of that sunny stuff. For when the sun's out, beaming over Soho, it imparts an almost narcotic thrill: free, non pharmaceutical ecstasy, which adults, children, policeman, pigeons (and pehaps even secretly, goths) alike can indulge in, unambiguously.

In this instance, I perhaps, slightly wish climactic conditions had permitted the gorgeous weather had intruded more over the preceeding Bank Holiday weekend, but fuck it, stepping out of work for lunch and putting on sunglasses is a truly wonderous thing, even if you're just going to purchase a sandwich from Pret.

I think half of it is the fact that England labours under some pretty grim weather a lot of the time. Often interesting, often cold, often windy, but mostly wet (and dark). Which has its plus points of course – the pasty faced brits have little recourse during the long winter months than to top up their screen tans writing Flash code and electronic music that cannot help being the envy of the world.

But when the sun has got his hat on... well hats off to the sun. Taking photos is easier in the sun, people smile more in the sun, supermarkets sell more Stella and disposable barbeques in the sun. Fuck, London feels more like New York in the Seventies to me in the sun – which is one of the things – everything has a kind of shimmering halcyon glow to it. You remember popping bubbles of tarmac on the road as a kid, the smell of cigarettes abroad (hell, I even remember watching TV while the sun was shining, probably Cities of Gold or summat).

But mostly, everyone smiles a bit more, and is a bit less god-damn introspective, which in this metropolis, on this rain lashed outcropping of rock, on this bauble of matter orbiting the sun itself, cannot be underappreciated. Sun, you primary source of Earth's energy, I salute thee.*

*Cue some kind of Ballard-esque 70s sci-fi sun-based disaster scenario (which is probably, actually happening somewhere).