Summer finally arrived this week and the British public suddenly became all sun boiled, stuck in traffic jams on irascible family outings.

It’s great to be on holiday isn’t it? Either you’re on one long staycation trying to avoid the Prime Minister and his spawn or you’ve gone abroad and are facing down two week’s quarantine house arrest wherever you’re traveling from. Even The Social Gathering’s gnostic travel bureau doesn’t seem to be able help. Having gone into a dream state hibernation, it looks like stuck in their heads, lost in a period of super contemplation. We did managed one quick moment of deep, nostalgic time travel with the first extract from Madeleine Swift’s phenomenal book The Camp. A glorious invocation of holiday’s past, it managed to lift the weirdness funk of this strange old summer for a few hours.

Apologies if the next week or two is a bit stop-start on the site and with this newsletter – we’re packing for all weathers and variously braving the elements in a tent on the south coast or on a promenade in the north west. Or, sat around a swimming pool in Essex like something out of Sexy Beast, proving you can get all sun boiled and irascible in your own back yard if you try hard enough.