Oh God. Just when you thought it was safe to pick up The Leither, here comes professional misrerabilist Monty to rain on our parade. And not just any rain; Chernobyl Vintage straight from the cellar. A robust ’86, full of radioactive gloom, acidic notes, and maybe a little bit of carcinogenic sediment rolling round the old mouth feel. But does anyone, like me, really struggle with summer?

Paradox alert! Man claims he won’t depress you and follows immediately with a wallop of woe so hefty you’d need a tugboat of Prozac to right your ship – with apologies to Jamie from ‘The Thick of It’, who first spat such venomous words – barbs, too abundant to list here. It’s keening I want to talk about here. Of the ritual Gaelic lamentation variety.

Because again, to proof PG Wodehouse’s famously/infamously salty aphorism, “It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine”, I’m afraid I am ‘that’ Scotsman. And it’s rays of sunshine have left me mirthless. For despite being an August (and not august) child, the summer to me at least, has become an endurance test of sorts.

Not the sunshine per se – I retract that. It’s rather the promise of sunshine in both the literal and figurative sense that troubles me. The former? Good luck in this country; climate change seems to have turbo-charged our erratic weather. You can always – if the finances allow – bog off to Bodrum or wherever to secure the Vitamin D. But the figurative? Therein lies the rub for me. And for why, we must away to 1977…

August 16th, 1977. Yours truly has just turned 5. All is right with the world. Party balloons, cake, pass the parcel, wee pals around… and dear old Mum a quite brilliant mother when it came to ‘doing these occasions properly’ emerges from the kitchenette (it’s the 70s folks), in floods of tears. “THE KING IS DEAD” she wails. We were all traumatised. For so was she. By the news that Elvis had died. On my birthday.

And then the ghost of the King passed into me, turning me into a jump-suited prodigy… oh wait, that’s happened in a parallel universe (gee thanks Hugh Everett!). No, what happened was, life went on. Mum dried her eyes with a sparkly birthday serviette. And we all got stuck into jelly and ice-cream. But as a Wednesday’s Child (and thus already brimming with woe according to the rhyme), the lachrymose time layby touched me.

Yet summers carried on, comme d’habitude. Football usually. Bikes (pedals, not motors). British Bulldogs. Water fights. We’d visit the Isle of Man a lot, my Mum being Manx – that’s me wearing a Pyrex wig in the photae. And years later, I even cracked a summer smile as a student in Edinburgh (when I actually found the Festival wanks tolerable). It wasn’t until much later that a deep sadness during summer set in.

Maybe, like rocker Eddie Cochran – of Summertime Blues fame – I could take my problem to the Uuuunited Nations. Except I think they have bigger fish to fry these days. Most days. Forever. So let’s flip it and dig deeper for a cure to my own ‘summertime blues’. It’s not all doom and gloom, right? Nope, no it isn’t. Even for one so Stygian as myself. Here are my top three things to love about summers in Edinburgh.

Standing outside the Malt and Hops, by a barrel, with a cold pint

I’ll admit, I’m not one who thinks Leith is the idyll as painted in Rough Guides and aw that. Its flaws should be owned – and it’s hubris to suggest otherwise. But, as a onetime resident of The Shore, and someone who’s worked down there for nearly all my life, you cannae beat a pint of something fizzy at a barrel outside The Malt on a hot day. Class.

Expertly avoiding having to be handed festival show flyers in town

This is Black Belt Edinburgh stuff. Because there’s nowt worse than an arse-ache spod thrusting their flyer for a show about ‘Situationist Weasel Wrangling’ into your hand when gadding through toon. I’ve mastered the art. No barked warning or violence. Just a death stare and a swerve so sexy it could make a stuffy nun blush.

Watching Americans come to terms with how fecking old the place is

I worked a summer as a Council museum attendant mostly at The People’s Story on the Canongate. Once an American tour group complained about the stairs in the building. I explained it was older than their country, by a good 400 years. It broke them. And I have taken great pleasure in doing similar ever since. Insert evil cackle here.

Christ, I’m feeling sunnier already. But whatever your seasonal bias, enjoy the summer.