I Scream, You Scream...

Hasn't the weather been glorious? I can't remember ever having an April such as this before. 

We are very fortunate to have enormous windows in our lab office. Whilst this means that we are able to look out to beautiful views of piercing blue skies, excitedly nesting birds and barely-swaying trees, it also forces us to endure the torture of being knowingly stuck inside, faced with a day's worth of work keeping us from the beauty of the outdoors. 

At about four o'clock on friday afternoon, I had reached the end of my tether with a particular section of my work. Having kept my back to the outside world whilst painstakingly perfecting a few, seemingly endless paragraphs, I had become morbidly fed-up and, recalling this photo that I took the other day whilst in Sharrow, found my mind increasingly wandering towards thoughts of ice cream. After steeling myself against these pangs of longing for a couple of hours, I decided that I could bare it no longer and headed for the nearest ice cream van. I was not alone.

One of the many quintessentially British behaviours unfathomable to foreigners is our tendency to get excessively excited by the slightest hint of sunshine. Whilst I stood in the unseasonably-long queue for the ice cream van, I surveyed the park next to which, I stood. It was positively littered with people sunbathing, playing with frisbees, firing-up a barbeque with friends; all in a varying level of relative undress. Most wearing shorts, some men even topless; all desperate to enjoy the sunshine whilst it lasts.

Once I had my 99 (ahem, £1.50) flake in hand, I slumped down on the grass to join them. It was divine. I was only there for fifteen minutes or so, before I had to go back to work, but a spot of sunshine with a childhood-throwback ice cream and an article about knitting was all I needed to keep me going.  

Well, so I told myself. I could have stayed there all afternoon.