Lazy Summer

I had high hopes for this summer: A nice holiday in some beautiful European holiday spot, lovely sunny weather at home in England, a bit of camping and fishing with my son, perhaps a garden party in our back garden...
Hah!
The holiday was judged (by me) to be unwise at the moment, because the dread tax man will be along any day to take a big wad of my hard earned, the result of a screw up by my employer in how much PAYE (pained as you earn) tax I paid last year.
The lovely sunny weather has not materialised, with 90 mm of rain falling in a mere 6 hours last month and creating some rather severe problems. (see YouTube for some cool footage).
Camping was rather out, as the result of miserable conditions, as was fishing.
The weather, I will put it down to, has caused a certain malaise in my motivation to do anything whatsoever in my back garden, which now resembles a weed patch. An example of the sort of effort having a garden party in the rain involves can be seen by my colleague Darren's party photos, below.

The summer, what there was of it, is now nearly over, and not a lot has happened.
I am, however, going to Lisbon the day after tomorrow for some 'team building.' The sun, luckily, does know how to shine there, apparently, with 33°C temperatures. Bon dia Portugal!
The Frengle-Izawa household is somewhat upset by this summer in general, and the Izawa contingent rather upset that I alone get a sort of whatchamacalit...HOLIDAY! Ok, ok, it is work...that is certainly what I will be telling myself while we are yachting and drinking Vino Verde. I did actually try to get tickets for son and wife, but this is high season, the upcoming weekend a 3-day weekend, and tickets were not to be had for less than £250 each.
Ah, well, I will try not to feel guilty, though my Catholic-Jewish early education seems to have effectively ruled out EVER not feeling guilty...
One knows that payment will likely be extracted in autumn, quite possibly in the form of a trip to Euro-Disney...