When I was a child, my family and I would go camping each summer in France, Spain or Italy. Each campsite had its own supermarket, where we were sent every morning for bread. They were heady with the smell of melons, peaches, plums and berries so ripe that they seemed ready to burst through their skin.

Ripe fruit – the type that disintegrates into pulp when bitten, near-alcoholic in its taste – is one of the true spoils of summer. Whether softly bruised nectarines, plump red cherries or the doughnut-like flat peaches that the Italians call “saturnine” (grown on the heat-baked slopes of Mount Etna since the 1800s), nothing tastes better than fruit that’s picked only when it’s ripe and ready.

As such, like Elio’s infamous peach in Call Me By Your Name, picked straight from the tree, it’s a metaphor for summer’s ephemeral pleasures. Soon, it will be over, but the memory of its sweetness will linger on.

Last summer, I realised that blond(e)s really do have more fun. For months I’d been dabbling with hair dye and edging closer towards my blond ambitions with a helping hand from the hair stylists at Notting Hill’s Mr Larry King, who finally convinced me to fully take the platinum plunge. The result was magical.

From the moment I stepped out with my fresh peroxide cut, I was transformed into a free-spirited, beachy blond, able to explore my new champagne-coloured world. The new hair transformed everything. My jewellery developed a new character, with pearl necklaces feeling surfy and gold chains turning into antique treasures. My skin tone felt healthier and sun-kissed. All I had to do was throw on a T-shirt with sports shorts and a baseball cap for a look straight out of 90210. Better yet, the bleach gave my naturally fine, straight hair a choppier, textured finish that I’d always attempted to imitate.

Mr Howard Hawks had it all wrong: gentlemen don’t prefer blondes – they want to be blond.

Summer means the revival of an annual competition for me: the great gelato contest of Italy. Since moving to this country from the US 12 years ago, I’ve realised both how banal and disappointing a second-rate gelato can be, but also how rapturously memorable a few cold ingredients can become when, on a sunny Italian afternoon, everything comes together perfectly.

There’s a key to understanding a good gelateria and that key is pistachio. It’s a staple in the arsenal of every ice cream joint on the peninsula, but one whose subtle flavour can fly only if the nuts themselves are exceptional, not overly sweetened, and probably from Bronte, the Sicilian town whose famed pistachios bear the EU’s protected designation of origin.

Gelato, or any good ice cream elsewhere in the world, encapsulates the hedonistic pleasure we give ourselves over to in summer. In winter, I forget all about gelato, but from the season’s first warm days, I’m dreaming of the slightly salted pistachio at Milan’s Gelateria della Musica, the whispery delicate interpretation at Florence’s Gelateria della Passera, the densely nutty version at Siké in Milazzo near the dock for the boats to the Aeolian islands.

When I later arrived at the basalt shores of Stromboli and saw, for the first time in my life, an active volcano shooting fire into the air from its black cinder mouth, it made an impression on me that I’ll never forget. But you know what? So did the gelato.

People are weird about feet. But I have no issue looking at strangers’ toes rammed into sandals. Seeing an unsheathed foot braving the city pavement during the warmer months makes me oddly happy. Socks make me feel claustrophobic, so my ankles are out for at least 50 weeks of the year (a stranger in a New York coffee shop on the first day of spring once offered me a pair of his own socks because he thought I didn’t have any). I don’t recognise myself when my ankles are covered.

I wear sandals all the way through the warmer months, rotating three pairs of a leather cross strap style from Church’s, Álvaro and Manolo Blahnik that all look identical. I’m close to wearing out a fantastic pair of shearling and tapestry sandals that are part-antique, part-Fizzgig from The Dark Crystal.

If there is a mere chance of rain, I wear a pair of plastic tabis, which I think are intended for running across hills. I like to wear clothes free from the seasonal distraction of pattern, texture and cut, so the ankle down is where I can have some fun.

Summer demands a certain oomph, an ease. When my feet are free, my head follows, too.