Sept 2025

Brief: That Summer

Many people have used summer as an inspiration, from ‘Summer Loving’ in the musical Grease to LP Hartley’s ‘The Go-Between’.

Writers are asked to explore the prompt in any way they choose. 300 words that bring this season to life.

A summer, remembered.

I was four in the summer of 1958. The sun shone each day, and it never occurred to me that one day I would be five. Now I can hardly believe I am past seventy. Back then, every day, my mother and I used to walk to the local shops under vast blue skies, with Sally the spaniel in tow, dutifully following wherever my mother would go. Or maybe I rode in a push chair. I’m not sure I remember the exact details. I do know we had a spaniel, and there were endless breathless blue days that summer. Or do I just imagine that memory?  Sometimes, I think childhood memories are just things that your parents later told you had happened, filtering out their disappointments. One thing is certain: I can remember having mashed potatoes and a runny egg for lunch. I remember the mash, with the fried egg on top, a runny yellow yoke as bright as the summer sun and a knob of butter melting and running down the side.  And pushing the fork through the yoke, so that it also ran down the side, all mixed up with the mash and the melted butter. No, perhaps not a fork. I think I remember a pusher - and a spoon.  Yes, I’m sure I remember a pusher - just like a fork, but with a flat plate across the non-handle end.  You could push the runny butter and the oozing yoke into the mash and onto the spoon.  And then send it ‘down red lane’, as my mother would say, and into my happy tummy.  I think the pusher must now be in a drawer or cupboard somewhere, probably with my Christening mug, both wrapped up in blue tissue paper. I loved that pusher and the eggy mash. I can remember that, yes, I’m sure I can remember that and those endless days of summer.

(318 words)