Summer is a comin' in

"Officials likely to declare the first day of summer today" read the front page of the 'Shanghai Daily', an entirely objective English language publication with no government input whatsoever, which I amuse myself with while drinking my rather good coffee on the way back from taking Eliot to school. I imagined a designated office for the declaration of the seasons in which grey suited men debated whether or not to change the season. Could an especially persuasive civil servant have summer declared in January? Sadly no. It seems there is a prescribed formula. When the average temperature is over 22 degrees for five consecutive days, summer is deemed to have started on the first of those days. As the temperature rose to 30, summer was duly declared to have begun. Today, it is 16 degrees and pouring with rain.