Summer hibernation

High summer, the period when all schools are closed for the holidays and the 'bouwvak' (= builder's vacation) is in session, is called 'cucumbertime' in the Netherlands. We produce a lot of cucumbers, mostly around this time of the year (although actually year-round, since they're grown in greenhouses) and apparently this is the only actual interesting piece of news in summer. 'Cucumbertime' denotes the time that nothing really happens, parliament isn't in session, most people are away on holiday, and we can all fall into a pleasant slumber while the German tourists take over our coastline and the Asian tourists take over everything else.
This year, we went on holiday really early, in the beginning of June, so we get to experience the whole cucumber event for the full length. And it is really true. Nothing really happens. People are contently slow, waking up late, going to bed early, doing nothing much in between. Except when you have to go to work of course, which I still have to do most days, but even there it is really quiet, a maximum of 20 emails a day, lots of time to catch up with colleagues or get down to annoying-and-lengthy-but-still-important tasks you couldn't find time for in the rest of the year. But you go home a bit earlier, do less when you actually are home, go to bed early and sleep badly because of the heat. And then repeat, until some time mid-August when the whole country suddenly snaps awake again (already, my work agenda has been filling up from the 20th of August down right until the beginning of October).

But this year, it's different. This year, a plane was shot down, and the whole country has been in a state of bewilderment and shock for about a week now. The most trivial facts suddenly become massively important, with the major news outlet sending out push messages whenever our king or prime minister utters a few words in public. Also, news reporters are reporting more about their own personal experiences on their respective sites, than that they're doing much actual reporting. And everybody has to know everything about everything that happened and everybody who was affected and it's like there is nothing else happening in the world but bodies being found and moved and put into trains and trains moving to other cities and bodies being put into air planes and air planes flying to the Netherlands and bodies being put into cars and cars going some place where they will finally identify said bodies. That, and the Tour the France, of course.

Somehow, it all feels like cucumbertime squared. It's just so many tiny details that in ordinary life are important to no one but are now suddenly massive news. It's not about the politics behind this, or the war, or about the humanity, it's all about the little details. The vox pop, the human side of things. Interviewing anyone and everyone remotely connected to aviation, the military, the deceased, etcetera. It's like we're still not realising that this year, there will be no pleasant summer slumber, this year, something really happened, something massively important, and that we should pay attention. To the big things, the times in motion, not the small details. It's like they're still wanting to speak to the lady who just learnt to double park her caravan, while that same caravan has just been shot down by tent salespeople. Or some other weird analogy.

In any case, it feels pretty surreal, and maybe the best thing to do is to return to our summer hibernation and return when the world has somehow been patched together again. And we will be able to process this as normal news, in the normal way. Which is not to disregard anyone's feelings in this thing, it's just an observation on the way news travels and is digested in these long, slow summer months.