Easy parking and playing Scrabble: the best things about the holidays

People swimming at Bondi beach on a hot Sunday. Picture by Damian Shaw

In a few days, summer will start. Well, that’s its official arrival. As we all know, summer is a volatile visitor these days, teasing with a few days of heatwaves carried on desert winds before being spirited away on an Arctic chill.

Summer is the story Australia tells of itself, its calling card for the world’s tourists but it’s hard to get sentimental about it now. The romance of the season, with its memories of an endless stretch of beach and freewheeling childhoods, has been usurped by the science of the season.

Too hot? How hot? Let’s read the gauge, check the forecasts, note the warnings of fire, flood, cyclonic winds, panting pets, water shortages, drought-proofing gardens, and did you know heat kills more people than the cold? We do know. Have known for a while.

But there’s a reason summer sits well with our national psyche and it’s not just about the weather. We might have to dig a little deeper to remind ourselves of these languorous days but, kick back, I’ve done some digging for you.

After the first week of December, there will be no more interest rate announcements. There will be two months when no one has to sweat on whether they can still afford sausages or whether home-brand baked beans will be the new ­staple.

Speaking of selling the home, the real estate industry hibernates for a few months. So, there’s no pressure to scan listings for downsizing opportunities or read about how bog standard bungalows became $20m listings. You’re staying put, with a cupboard full of baked beans.

Everything stops in summer. If you want a tradie, you’ll have to wait til the plumber’s last skin peel has healed. No need to fret about a half-finished reno or a dicky door, it’s not going to happen. There’s calm in accepting that.

The corporate doors are closed too. Two weeks, they say, everybody out. Four weeks is even better, get the leave off the books. The traffic will ease with the last of Christmas shopping, getting about in cities will feel like it did in the Sixties and the buzz in seaside towns will feel retro too – reminiscent of times when little towns had populations, not just Airbnbs.

When emergencies arise – and the science tells us they will – we will get to show our Australian spirit. In fires, floods and the once in 100-year storms that happen every summer we will be able to pull together, do our bit, give money or lend some muscle to those affected. We will remind ourselves of the people we used to be.

Families will be around each other. All. The. Time. And we might say that with a groan but it’s often when we are forced into close contact for an interminable time that we really get to know each other – especially if that time is spent over a Scrabble board. We have time to get bored and, if we get creative with boredom, we can discover something simple, delightful, something that reminds us that time is relative, stretching or compressing depending on how long the Scrabble game lasts.

There is, I’m beginning to realise, a sense of deja vu to all this and I’m not thinking of a time 30 years ago. Businesses closed, traffic eliminated, families together, long periods of not much to do except make our own fun, take a walk, have a swim and do it all with a sense of existential fear that something big is happening and it might not end well.

Gee, I thought it would be happier than this. But, hey, we did lockdowns well. And isn’t summer just a time for locking out the world?

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