How we spent our summer

Already into November, London doesn't so much feel like summer.

But we felt it in the streets, on a day like this (below), summertime.

July 8, on the deck with his summer friend, Ee Ee. Within the month Bob would be saying good bye to his sweet toddler mullet.

This post and the ones to follow narrate our summer in London.

British people will remember the summer of 2018 as one of a remarkable and sustained heat wave and a surprising abundance of sun and lack of rain. British people like to say on sunny summer days that this will be the last one for the year, but that just kept being not true this summer. You can see in the chart below that while the winter was particularly cold (when compared to historical averages, called normal, below), the summer was particularly hot. My apologies that the data is in Celsius. The temperatures are also for the UK as a whole. Twenty degrees Celsius is sixty-eight Fahrenheit. In London it was hotter, up past 95°F in July. The below at least proves that it was especially hot this summer.

As a family of Midwestern Singaporeans, the high temperatures didn't bother us too much, even while not having air conditioning in our apartment. We rarely use it even in Singapore or the U.S. anyway. And we found a number of fun ways to beat the heat.

Over the summer, we traveled in Europe, in England, and in London, avoiding working when possible, visiting our local parks and some of London's other parks. We ventured out for good food and made some at home. All three of us were gripped by England's historic performance in the World Cup, with England's captain, Harry Kane, being the tournament's top goal scorer. Bob was loving the goals, yelling "GOAL!" even when there were no goals scored.

In addition to fun with soccer, the boy's summer was marked by steady improvement in his language abilities. While he seems to understand spoken Chinese almost as well as English (to the extent he even understands English!), he mostly says words in English, even if responding to something said in Chinese. He was saying more and more single words, eventually putting two words together, and now even using some complete sentences. He sort of knows his numbers and sort of knows his colors. Most words are missing at least some letters, and some words are unintelligible or only intelligible to Mum and Baba. Ah-dee was train, apparently approximating the Chinese huo che before it became taihn.

The blog entry will be split into three parts:

• Early summer and the approach, highlights including a visit to Rome and adventures in London;
• The midsummer night's dream, highlights including the World Cup and trips to D.C., Midlands, and Cotswolds; and
• End of summer and beyond, highlights including Nainai's end of summer British sojourn, northern adventures, and the big boy's birthday.

Childish Gambino's single, released 11 July, 2018, was a popular song in the FD Linges' apartment. The tortured intro to this blog post tries to use some of the song's lyrics to describe our summer. Perhaps the pictures in the entries below may do a better job.