Good riddance to the worst summer in living memory

Whether it’s the Wimbledon washout, Angela Rayner’s raving or a row over the price of Oasis tickets, this has been a season to forget

September should, by rights, bring with it a collective groan. After a long summer of picnics, beach trips, sport and perhaps even a little sunburn, we all have to grapple with the grind of getting back to work and school. Often, the slight fizz of excitement at the prospect of a pub fire, a damp stomp around a park, the reintroduction of routine in your week and mashed potato in your diet offers a measure of solace for the months ahead. You may want to feel that after living in sandals for the last little while, you’ve really earned that first crunch of fallen leaves underfoot. 
But, frankly, it’s harder to muster any enthusiasm for the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness after the coolest summer in nearly a decade. Yes, it’s official now. That washout of a summer you just endured really was as bad as it seemed. The average temperature was – brace yourself – 14.37C. The North Sea is often warmer than that. A convergence of winds was to blame, apparently: cold Arctic ones that arrived in June and July, westerly ones bringing slightly warmer Atlantic air in August. Spring now seems to run on forever. Autumn, as seems to be the recent trend, has arrived too soon. “Although we had some heatwaves and bursts of hot weather, these were fairly short-lived – and conditions across the whole three months were pretty unsettled,” said Emily Carlisle, a Met Office scientist. Weren’t they just. 
In fact, unsettled might be the best word for summer 2024. Recent riots led by the far-Right, fuelled by misinformation in the wake of the killing of three schoolgirls in Southport, provoked something of a moral reckoning – posing deep questions about the state of the nation and the health of our democracy.
But there were also a litany of altogether more trivial moments and annoyances which fuelled a widespread sense of gloom.
On that note, you could start with the moment Rishi Sunak opted to call an election in a downpour. If ever there was an image to portend a miserable few months ahead, it was surely that of the then PM propping up the Downing Street lectern, his shoulders slick with rain, a look of utter misery on his face. 
That was May 22. By the time he left Number 10 on July 5, it was still raining. In fact it rained so much during that particular slice of the “summer” that Wimbledon had to hand out refunds. On one particular day there was almost no play on the outside courts – 75 matches out of 91 were cancelled. The Met Office declared more than a month’s rain had fallen in the first nine days of the championships. The Centre Court roof had never seen so much action. 
It was disappointing, given that all through the six weeks of mudslinging and predictability that was the general election, the kernel of joy on the horizon was supposed to be the upcoming summer of sport. The Euros, the tennis and an Olympic Games close enough to home you could watch the pommel horse at a civilised hour or even hop on the Eurostar and see it for yourself. Yes, the sport should have saved us, shouldn’t it? Why didn’t it save us? 
It started badly when Andy Murray withdrew from the men’s singles tournament at Wimbledon on July 2. By this point England’s performance in the Euros was looking distinctly, worryingly average and the mutterings began that Gareth Southgate’s status as a national treasure was on thin ice. England clung on, glory once again tantalisingly in sight. You can only imagine the victory parade that was tentatively being planned behind the scenes. And then, ever so predictably, it didn’t quite come home. Fifty-eight years of hurt and counting, then. 
Not to worry: the Olympics ought to cheer us up. And to be absolutely fair, it did once it got going. In fact the sheer oddness of the (also rain-soaked) opening ceremony afforded us the opportunity to reminisce about how brilliant ours was in 2012. “Remember that bit about the industrial revolution?” “Yeah, and the bit when the Queen jumped out of a plane?” “I liked the bit when we reminded everyone we invented the World Wide Web. God, that Danny Boyle’s good.” 
The Telegraph’s Jim White perhaps said it best of Paris’s go at ushering in the Games: “Sadly, until [Celine] Dion’s intervention, what this ceremony will be largely remembered for is the world’s best athletes huddled under rain protection stuck on barges they could not get off.”
If yours was a staycation summer, that may have been roughly how it felt to be stuck in Britain while a new government shambled to its feet – which is not, it’s important to say, a comment on Angela Rayner’s dancing. The Deputy PM was throwing some fine shapes in that Ibiza nightclub. Gotye’s Somebody That I Used to Know demands an enthusiastic jig. Who can blame her? Safe to say it didn’t go down hugely well with anyone who was struggling to light a barbecue back in Blighty.
Even culture couldn’t help. There were the lost Taylor Swift dates – undoubtedly the right call to cancel them amid chilling terror threats, but tough on the Swifties who had been waiting months to see their idol. And the Oasis news soon descended into, put simply, pure agg. 
A triumphant return of the nation’s grumpiest musical brothers, flashbacks of a simpler, grungier time, and within days there was a row over ticket prices. Liam is now telling fans on X to “shut up”, suggesting to one they might like to buy “kneeling” tickets. He always was a charmer. 
And so, a chilly, largely underwhelming and, in some moments, altogether sorrowful summer ends on a sour note. The worst in living memory, perhaps. 
Autumn, you certainly have an awful lot of making up to do.