What a difference that Spanish wind makes. This is the country we should have been. In precisely the same way JFK should have ducked, vegetarians forcing you to eat their oomsk at supper should be more apologetic, Olivia Williams should have been my wife, Amy Winehouse should be given a seventh chance, Concorde should still be flying, Steely Dan and not the Stones should have "won" the 70s, every car should have the style of a Reliant Scimitar, Fernet Branca should stay forever in the bottle. Britain should have been nearer the Med.
Because we do it well, very well. Maybe not everywhere. But yesterday in Brighton and Hove, as the proper sun properly came out, everyone did it tremendously well, as if living in the country we should have been. A spokeswoman from the Met Office said that, although the official temperature had only reached 13C, it felt much warmer – warmer, even, than either Greece or Turkey.
It wasn't just that there was goodwill. Steve Boole, co-manager of the Café de le Mer, happily taking in a sudden fair profit – "It's April, what's happening?" – told me that he and neighbouring traders did a "very non-London" thing, swapping ice and chips and whatevers, because they have to be friends as, come the November gloom, they'll be lucky to serve a three-legged dog.
No, it wasn't just the goodwill, nor the sunshine. It was the realisation that Britain doesn't, actually, need gadgets. Along both beaches, Brighton and Hove, they sprawled, nestled, huddled, danced. They spoke. They read real books, legs and pages splayed out on the shingle. Old wispy women, driven by nice fat husbands in coupled-up mobility scooters, read real books. Single women in thongs – I glanced, just a glance for God's sake, for this piece – lay on their own, reading real books. In the cafes, people talked. There was a frankly astonishing lack of texting or emailing or phoning or anything: this is hot, this is how it should be: I'm with my best friends or beloveds or parents, and what a difference. People held hands.
"It's just a tease, in a way," says New Zealander Alan Chinery, who runs Brighton Watersports, suddenly sold out. Many odd, un-saily people were in the water. "But it probably sets us up for summer, lets us remind ourselves that summer comes. It always does. Even in England."
Lots of people came to Brighton yesterday. At an educated guess – I spoke to many Americans in the sunshine – it was probably like 146.5 billion. There was a perfect and an unfogged atmosphere. Many friendships, much fun. The beach was as clogged as those documentaries you see about crabs. Crabs clogging beaches. But I really can't stress it enough – there was an utter forgetitude about phones, messages, phoney urgencies. This happens in cold clamped clenched Britain, where we have to make ourselves alive by e-connecting. When we actually do connect, there's no need.
Why, I wondered of the McMahon family, come to visit son Louis in Brighton all the way from Glasgow, did this suddenly work? "It's something to do with the sea," says dad Charles. "It's all open. Most people see closed stuff all the time. This is, actually, warm, and it's heaven."
Round the corner, the band Hot Rox (yes, I know, but still: fab if climatically inappropriate version of Moondance. Maybe they'll repeat it as that growing smile of a moon does come up later. Or they could even think of doing Just a Thong at Twilight. Sorry, so sorry) is playing… stuff… and people are dancing. This is only two o'clock, but it's wising up for a thoroughly hot night.
I am indebted to a nice woman from the Met Office for telling me that it was a great wind from Spain which has caused this all. Apparently we have had weeks of stuff from Norway and other pretty but furiously cold countries. There's more info, but it would depress you.
Still. Bail them out. Greece, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, I do hope I haven't mentioned any countries that are currently not euro-indebted and thus got them into trouble. But, still. We'll send you our billions. Just send us your wind. Let us be the country we should have been. Honestly, we do it rather well.
We do it via age, as well. In Brighton yesterday the odd thing was that the old stayed on the main road, eating (rubbish) crab, subsumed by exhaust fumes from the many Londoners – I'm going to have to check that 146 billion figure of before, but am sure I am roughly right. Halfway down the shingle, the lovers. By the actual water, toddlers, and me. Paddling. Water is cold, but pleasing. Across the ghost-mist, there is France. This is the country we should have been.
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