On the cusp of the summer solstice, Druids gathering in the vicinity of Stonehenge, sunshine and blue skies here in Deep Cove. A chilled glass of wine on the back deck, and a dessert of fresh local strawberries with vanilla ice cream: what more could an editorial collective want?

Just this brief revisition of Waugh’s Brideshead, Chapter 1, for proof — if proof were needed — that strawberries (and good literature) are all it takes to make a summer:

Sebastian entered — dove-grey flannel, white crepe-de-chine, a Charvet tie, my tie as it happened, a pattern of postage stamps — “Charles, what in the world’s happening at your college? Is there a circus? I’ve seen everything except elephants. I must say the whole of Oxford has become most peculiar suddenly. Last night it was pullulating with women. You’re to come away at once, out of danger. I’ve got a motor-car and a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Château Peyraguey — which isn’t a wine you’ve ever tasted, so don’t pretend. It’s heaven with strawberries.”

[…]

At Swindon we turned off the main road and, as the sun mounted high, we were among dry-stone walls and ashlar houses. It was about eleven when Sebastian, without warning, turned the car into a cart track and stopped. It was hot enough now to make us seek the shade. On a sheep-cropped knoll under a clump of elms we ate the strawberries and drank the wine — as Sebastian promised, they were delicious together — and we lit fat, Turkish cigarettes and lay on our backs, Sebastian’s eyes on the leaves above him, mine on his profile, while the blue-grey smoke rose, untroubled by any wind, to the blue-green shadows of foliage, and the sweet scent of the tobacco merged with the sweet summer scents around us and the fumes of the sweet, golden wine seemed to lift us a finger’s breadth above the turf and hold us suspended.