So, the much vaunted long hot summer of 2009, how’s it going for you? I was at a party on Saturday and, suffice to say, the hostess got full value for the gazebo she’d pessimistically, but correctly, hired for the back garden. When, incidentally, does a large gazebo become a small marquee? I fear we’ll all know by September.

And on the Sunday, in Cambridge, visiting relatives, we were considering a punt until one floated by, its payload invisible under six or seven interlinked umbrellas, looking a lot like the Spartans must have done at Thermopylae.

All this rain makes me, a shade off 45, feel old. Why? Because whenever it starts chucking it down, I can’t help thinking: “Ah well, at least it’s good for the garden.” Another few years and I’ll actually be saying “Ah well, it’s good for the garden” out loud. It’ll start with friends and family, and then a few years later I’ll be accosting random strangers in the street and telling them “Ah well, it’s good for the garden” as well. After that comes “Hot enough for you?” to mystified young women. Soon after which, mercifully, total physical and mental collapse intervenes.

Inhale and hearty

One of the great pleasures of visiting elderly relatives is they still let you smoke indoors. When my uncle, 80, lit up in his armchair, my cousin and I could barely believe our luck. My children, however, on best behaviour so they didn’t pass comment yet their expressions said it all, looked more shocked than if Great Uncle Patrick had fished a crack pipe out of his jacket and said: “Anyone fancy a blast on this?”

Small talk from A to Z

Another sure sign of advancing middle age is, for men, taking a close interest in the precise details of other men’s transport arrangements, as in: “Ah, so you dropped down off the A40 there, did you?” That is exactly what I found myself saying at the party under the overworked gazebo. Another decade and I’ll have advanced to: “So, what are you driving these days?”

Foresight saga

My friend Steve gets chatting to a woman in a bar. “I bet I can guess your star sign,” she says. Steve, under no illusions as to the influence of some random configurations of stars on your personality, groans. But, he’s polite, and she seems OK, and, most importantly (I’d have given her short shrift), he’s young, time is on his side.

Here’s how the conversation proceeds. As with all things relating to astrology, I’m afraid, it’s deadly boring. Stick with it though, the punchline’s a cracker.

“You’re a Virgo aren’t you?” “No.” “Gemini?” “No.” “Libra?” “No.” “Aquarius?” “No.” Pause, strange secret astrological smile. “Cancer?” “No, sorry.” “Taurus?” “No.” “Scorpio?” “No, I’m really sorry, I’m not.” By now Steve is seriously embarrassed, partly for himself, mostly on behalf of the not-very-good stargazer opposite. She, however, plods gamely on, her odds on a correct guess now shortened to one in five.

“You’re not a Pisces are you?” “No, I’m not.” “Aries?” “No.” “Sagittarius?” “No.” By rights the would-be fortune-teller should now be mortified, but as we all know, it’s in the nature of closed systems of make-believe logic (Marxism, theology, Barack Obama arranging the death of Michael Jackson) that they will admit no empirical evidence, however overwhelming.

“Well,” says the woman, who now has a straight 50-50 shot, “you don’t seem like a Leo, but you’re definitely not a Capricorn, so you must be Leo.” “I’m Capricorn,” says Steve, grateful it’s finally over.

“I knew it!” shouts the woman, clapping her hand to her forehead, “The thing with Capricorns is they make it really hard to get them.”

Queen of Lord’s

I explained the lbw rule to my daughter over the weekend. Only took about 45 minutes. “So,” she said, recapping, “the ball must have knocked over the stumps if the man’s leg, or another bit of him, hadn’t been in the way, and when it hits him it must be on a pretend line between the stumps at each end. But it can hit the batsman to the left of the first stump and if he doesn’t try to hit it and the man in the white coat thinks the ball would have knocked into his stump, then the batsman is out then as well?”

Excellent, I said. “So,” she said, “we want Freddie Mercury to get this Australian out lbw?” “We want Freddie Mercury to get this Australian out however he can,” I said, stifling a giggle.

She’s only 10. Time enough to sort her towering-cultural-icons-called-Freddie out. Meanwhile, I’m grateful for the image of Freddie Mercury in all his glory (vest, yellow leather jacket, tracksuit trousers, ’tache) thundering in from the Pavilion End.

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