Music Monday: Regina Spektor

Truthfully, there are many other Regina Spektor songs that I like more than Summer In The City (Us, Flowers and Samson are my top three if, like me, you enjoy knowing these things!), but it fit nicely into what I wanted to write about today.

Summer, for me, is best enjoyed in the city.  Autumn and spring are lovely times to be in the countryside, and winter is fairly miserable wherever you are, but I love being in cities in the summer. 

My first summer living away from home - the summer of 1997 - had been fairly miserable and damp during June.  I'd just finished my first year of university and, after spending a bit of time at home (and at a legendarily muddy Glastonbury), I moved into a house in Leicester on July 1st.  In my memory, the sun then proceeded to shine for the following two months: day after day of warmth; of wading through the thick, humid air; of working in an unbearably sweaty club by night and wandering the city by day with my new-found friends.  This, then, this scorched concrete smell and shimmering heat haze glimmering above the pavements; this buzz and stutter of a thousand radios and the gathering of friends in parks; this sleeplessness which gives a hallucinogenic quality to the days; this set the pattern for my summers.  Still, now, I love being in Leicester when the sun is out, going to London in a heatwave, or walking around Manchester in the midday glare.  Summer, for me, should always be spent in the city.