London's 'brassy summer' is like a Pritchett short story

Photo by Diane Picchiottino on Unsplash

These last few days of British weather reminded me of V S Pritchett, the prolific English short story writer, it has been so brilliant and bright. The sun shining on London streets may be a strange reason to think of a man who went by the rather pompous sounding name Victor Sawdon and who was born 122 years ago and has been dead a quarter-century.

But the weather, of late, has been the sort that featured in one of my favourite Pritchett short stories: bright, brassy, offering a louche invitation to throw off the carapace of unnecessary clothing, bare one’s neck, arms and lower limbs and let the toes peek out of beach sandals on a London street.

In Pritchett’s words, we are “in the middle of one of those brassy fortnights of the London summer when English life, as we usually know it, is at a standstill, and everyone changes. A new grinning healthy race with long red necks sticking out of open shirts and blouses appears, and the sun brings out the va…