The splendour of Summer

As we enter the August bank holiday, I thought I'd  like to take look back to the Summer  when I was I was away and I saw this group of trees.

 It just appealed to me greatly so grabbed my camera  and took this picture in the early morning of it while other folks were doing other things like getting up.

Nature has always held a fascination for me, not least in my childhood being surrounded by countryside.

 

It isn't just flowers that interest me, even leaf structures do too.

Summertime Cub

 

Summertime means many things but being out, exploring, going on a hike is very much a part of what it means and was a part of my original boyhood as much as relatively unstructured play with my mates was.

Scratch the surface of this boy and you will find the eternal cub scout at his happiest playing games. learning new skills and having fun under the guidance his leader so it really was no accident at the age of fifteen and sixteen I went back in time, wearing cub scout uniform.

Today although officially you can't be a cub scout within the organization, I do shadow and follow much of what cub scouts do and learn to gain their badges having a specific uniform for such activities that include short trousers.

For a boy who hasn't really past ten years of age being taken back to learn the life skills I need while having fun makes a lot of sense

Summertime with more play

Summer for me always brings back memories of vacations of the past typically in traditional seaside resorts with beaches, long shore lines to walk on and playing in the sand, making big sandcastles with moats.

It includes the days we went down to the park for a game of footy or just a made run about making up games as we went along.

It's also days out at the fair, visiting the amusement arcades, eating ice cream, going on the Dodgems and riding the Merry-Go-Round with its distinctive rhythms without a care in the world.

It's also the place adult but child me really feels at home in, doing what I understand the best having fun.

Summertime play with your mates

Summer means time together exploring and doing things together in our very own spaces so we'd make dens or climb up to our tree house for a pow-pow and sesson together for ages or at least until our Mum's called us in (and home).

It is most emphatically NOT a girls zone, you have your own with your own kind so only boys are allowed to partake in play and rituals we, as boys, love and so we have our action figures, games and toys like guns we play with with much badinage and horse play tossed in for good measure.

We definately know what boys are here as we form a tight bond and that's how we like it  enjoying our masculine ways while the girls do their thing no doubt feeling better off for not having to accomodate us.

Of course there are times we might do the odd thing together but otherwise this suits all of us down to the ground.

I'm glad to be a boy.

Summertime 2016

A few weeks in the Summer, that period where on the last day of school you'd be feeling quite elated for being free of double maths period and the cross country in all weathers for a while and yet a couple of weeks on you're bored.

It's almost as though you cannot cope without that routine, knowing exactly where and what you'd be doing at any one point in time.

Holidays when I was younger had more of a routine planned into them by parents or other bodies such as schools just to get around of this.

It wouldn't be summer without some consideration of summer attire which for boys like me means more t shirts and casual shorts as in beach or sports types as like most boys as much as I like uniform, just breaking out of it for periods is great.

Boys like me belong in and wear Speedo type swimming trunks in and around the water, tight fitting and making us look rugged and, heck more attractive even compared with the swim shorts we used to wear.

Time for a ninty-nine me thinks...