Have clothes, just need summer

I swore I'd never do it. I lambasted those who did. I wrote a long epistle on how we should all just shut up about it but ... what's with this weather, huh?

As days of grey skies stretched into weeks and then months, I convinced myself that there was no need to panic, and certainly not to complain, because summer would be just around the corner.

But as the season progressed and I kept turning corners and finding myself face-to-face with a southerly, my patience turned as stormy as the skies above me.

I'd like to put it on the record that, quite frankly, summer has been arse.

One could be awfully high-brow about it and wax lyrical about the inclement nature of the forecast or the disappointing absence of sunshine but sometimes the best description is the most base one and for me, "arse" neatly sums up my thoughts, feelings and opinions on this past season in one nice, tidy and only moderately offensive word.

Like all females across the developed world, I embraced the end of winter with an optimism that saw me invest a considerable portion of my disposable income on skimpy clothing with prices that were inversely proportionate to the amount of fabric used to make them.

The result was a wardrobe of new season summer fashion that required only one accessory: sunshine.

As the "summer" wore on and became defined by a distinct lack of it, my new clothes started to feel like old ones and they hadn't even left the house.

Eventually with the sort of determination that saw my ancestors win wars and conquer new lands, I decided that no amount of unseasonable rain would hold me back and my new summer wardrobe had a late bloom.

With stoic commitment to the cause, I would sit shivering in my studio at work for eight hours at a stretch looking every inch an easy, breezy sun worshipper, despite a layer of goose pimples from head to toe on my pasty white skin.

Admittedly, there have been days that have proven the exception to the rule, but almost without exception these have been mid-week when most of us are trapped indoors working.

As a wedding photographer, I have become so accustomed to shooting in the rain at weekend weddings that, last Saturday, when the sun finally did show itself, I had to pause for a moment and remember how to actually shoot in bright light.

In a bid to see if any data had been collected yet on the number of rainy days sustained nationwide during the summer, I stumbled across a news story from November with the now laughable heading of "NIWA predicts long, hot summer".

As I sit beside the fire with my Ugg boots on in March, I can't help wondering if there are some awfully sheepish weather forecasters schlepping about quietly hoping no one remembered that particular prediction.

After months of dashed optimism, I finally gave up on summer. The official arrival of autumn came as a relief. At least I no longer could harbour any reasonable expectation of warm weather and blue skies.

I busted out the winter wardrobe and folded away the summer frocks, which was the only cue Mother Nature needed to turn it all on.

As I sit here tapping away about my frustrations over the weather, I am wearing socks, boots, jeans and a heavy merino top. Is the sun shining? Well, of course it is.