At this time of year, we’d typically be spending a great deal of time gazing out of the office window and daydreaming about our impending summer break. Things are a bit different this year, though. There’s no office, for a start, so no window to gaze out of. And that far-flung summer break? There’s no concrete guarantee that’s going to happen, either.

Instead of looking forward, then, we decided to look back into the past and recall some of our favourite memories of summers gone by: memories of clear skies and frigid swimming pools, of sun-drenched piazzas, striped beach umbrellas and moonlight glinting off the sea. Accompanying our swooning recollections are images of some of this season’s latest swim shorts from CDLP, Frescobol Carioca, Acne Studios and many more, styled and shot in an unlikely domestic setting, but looking none the worse for it.

Mr Chris Wallace, US Editor

When I was 13, my best friend and his family brought me with them to the impossibly exotic island of Maui, on holiday. I don’t think I’d ever even been on a holiday before. I had certainly never left the continental US, and hardly ever left my hometown. I loved Hawaii immediately: the densely jungled crevasses leading up to fog-bound volcanoes; the psychedelic shirts; the cheesy Pirates Of The Caribbean camp of Lahaina’s restaurants.

My friend and I took turns cliff-diving off enormously high rocks (wearing Nike Aqua Socks specially bought for the occasion), and explored underground caves. On one of our excursions, as we were tying up on the shores of Lanai, a local man happened to say, offhandedly I thought, that if we were to catch sea turtles, to remember to let go of them or else we’d be dragged back the many miles to Maui, underwater. Moments later, as I dived down searching for colourful fish, I came across a sea turtle in the white sand. Out of instinct, I grabbed it by its enormous shell, which was all the giddy-up signal it needed to rocket out to sea. When I did manage to let go, I was nearly 100ft deep and had to panic swim to the surface. It was a folly of youth that, upon surfacing safely, all I could think about was hitching another ride, taking it as far as I could. It is something else now that keeps me from letting go.

Mr Chris Elvidge, Marketing Editor

Several summers ago, a good friend invited me to his mother’s 60th birthday party at the family home in Pembrokeshire. He’d been tasked with catering for the guests and he needed an extra pair of hands. We were green and idealistic, and bit off more than we could chew. I decided to build a rudimentary pizza oven from scratch using clay from the stream at the bottom of the garden and young willow branches that I’d stripped and shaped into a dome. (We didn’t have a pizza paddle, so I used my friend’s dad’s garden spade instead.)

We bought a whole lamb from the farmer next door and barbecued it in the Argentinian style “a la cruz”, using a couple of old scaffolding poles to fashion a crucifix. And – this is something I’m not proud of – we took a tiny two-man rowing boat out into the coves, dragged a couple of lobster pots from the seabed with our bare hands and robbed them of their contents. Looking back now with a clarity afforded to me by age and experience, it’s clear that we had not the slightest clue what we were doing. How it didn’t turn out a complete disaster, I’ll never know.

Ms Molly Isabella Smith, Copywriter

Summer holidays for me are usually spent strolling city streets. In pre-corona times, I wasn’t especially fussy about which metropolis I landed in, but if I had to pick a city’s particular streets to amble around right now, it would be Florence’s cobbled lanes and sun-soaked squares. Sweating out lockdown in a pokey London house share has induced dreams of la dolce vita almost daily.

While I’m cooking, I think back to the tiny osteria where I scoffed quite possibly the best gnocchi I’ve ever tasted. When I’m watching Netflix, I remember gazing at Botticelli’s Primavera at the Uffizi Gallery. And on my irregular runs, I reminisce about hiking to the top of the Piazzale Michelangelo to admire the Duomo with an ice-cold Birra Moretti in hand. Until I can book another trip, I can at least console myself with a case of the stuff from Sainsbury’s.

Mr Dan Davies, Editorial Director

My halcyon summer was spent travelling Europe with seven friends in a Transit van in the late 1980s. The Greek islands were a magnet for us, pulling us from London, via long, sunbathed swathes of France and Italy. By the time we arrived in the port of Brindisi, the van was falling to bits. When we got to Piraeus, it had to be pushed on and off ferries. My abiding memories are of crystal-clear waters, lazy days in shady beachfront cafés and sleeping on the flat roofs of farm buildings under star-studded skies.

Ms Lili Göksenin, Senior Editor

Right about this time of year, I wish that I could be on the deck of my friend’s family house on the shores of the glorious Lake George in Upstate New York. We go every year (except this one, of course) in a huge unwieldy group – sometimes as many as 20 of us pack into the old lodge. But we have lake life down to a science, and several traditions, including 11.00am cocktail hour, the obligatory game of Scattergories and a thousand-piece puzzle on a table indoors for anyone who needs a peaceful break. 

We cap the weekend off with a dip in the near-freezing lake. At which point, one gentleman always realises he’s forgotten a swimsuit and has to borrow one from the house. Luckily, the house is full of baggy treasures from the 1980s and 1990s, so even if you’ve left your brand-new shorts at home, you’re still bound to look a treat.

Mr Chris Hall, Senior Watch Editor

When my wife and I got married, we were “given” a row of vines at a vineyard near Bergerac – a brass plaque with our names on at the end of the row, plus a crate of wine – with an invitation to stay on the vineyard. Our honeymoon had been quite active, so three days in a cottage in the heart of wine country sounded good for the soul. 

We were greeted with open arms and ushered straight into an impromptu wine tasting, then given three more bottles of wine before all the vineyard staff went home for the weekend, leaving us with the run of the place. The days were long and sunny. We barbecued steaks the size of shoes and sat out under the stars. We had long lunches in ancient town squares, swam, sunbathed and drove our tiny car to the bakery, or the chateau, or once, slightly squiffy, down the stony track that connected the swimming pool with our cottage to get more beers. We flew home feeling like we’d had two weeks off.

Mr Jim Merrett, Chief Sub-Editor

About a decade ago, I attended a wedding at a villa in Tuscany where my partner got so drunk that she threw a raw pork chop at me. But immediately prior to that, I remember – although my partner may not – retrieving bottles of wine from the depths of the property’s ice-cold swimming pool. The frigidity of watering holes is something of an arms race in Italy, with each residence claiming to have the most glacial. But it also comes in handy for chilling crisp, dry whites and rosés.