The summer presented itself in fits and starts this year: a handful of perfect days (a beautiful quality of light, warm, gentle breezes) interspersed with a few oppressively hot and humid ones, and then lashings of rain and dark, cloudy skies.

I relish seasonal change but (as autumn unpacks its chilly travelling trunk and makes itself at home) that doesn’t mean I’m averse to taking one last lingering look at the summer that never quite was…