I woke up one morning last week and it was June.

I don’t know how that happened, to be honest—while inattention gets the better of me at the best of times, I pride myself on my uncanny ability to know what time it is at any given moment. I can tell the time within an nth of a minute (usually)—it absolutely freaks my friends out. Having misplaced what appeared to me to be several months, therefore, was (quite understandably) somewhat distressing.

After all, summer is not a season that is meant to sneak up on you. 

Its arrival is heralded weeks in advance by spring showers and blooming flora. It is ushered in by the end of the school year, and the curtain call of myriad important-yet-ill-defined spans of time including (but not limited to) cuffing season, my lease agreement, and the Arthur editorial year.

Even though I was not dumped this year in conjunction with the release of a particularly devastating sadgirl singer-songwriter album, I admittedly should have seen this coming.

The past few months have carried with them a rather monumental sense of finality for me, personally. Within the span of thirty-some days I saw the end of the school year, celebrated the beginning of my 23rd year on this planet, saw out the contracts of our staff writers, moved all my belongings into a new apartment, and turned in the final paper of my undergraduate degree.

Now that I am finally at loose ends, I’m not entirely sure I know what to do with myself.

Still, I woke up this morning and it was June, and—pushing all immediate thoughts about pride month and Italians and my friends’ birthdays and the new season of Call of Duty out of my head, I thought to myself: wow, we really need to launch the Summer Serial.

To that end, I am pleased to announce—on behalf of my estimable other halves—the Summer Serial for Volume 58; Arthur presents: A Long Staycation.

“Long,” in as much as 3–4 months is a not inconsiderable portion of any calendar year, and “stay” insofar as we’re not going anywhere (well, not yet at least…).

While most students, especially at Trent, tend to leave the city for the summer, we three venerable writers remain, lavishing in the unique and steamy serenity that is the humid Nogojiwanong summertime.

While last year our summer serial was about escape—the road trip of a lifetime; a never-ending dream—this year we’ve come back to reality. The editorial isn’t in The Bowlcut, for starters.

So, here’s what you can expect from the three of us over the next three months:

First off, we’re still going to be reporting on all of the stuff we have been for the better part of this past volume—your City Hall fixin’s and Trent chatter isn’t going anywhere.

However, the summer is a period of experimentation, self-discovery, and détente, so you can also expect a lot more stuff that might not be *typical* of our output for the past ~9 months. 

We’re excited to announce that with the abundance of free time at our disposal, the editors have elected to start a Book Club!

Each month one of us will select a book for the other two to read. The curator will write a brief introduction explaining their reasoning, and the others—having read the book—will each write a response.

You, the reader, are welcome to follow along, of course—who knows, you might just find your next favourite read!

Our weekly newsletter, The Courier, will also remain in regular operation. If you’re not already signed up, maybe you should do so! (If you’re seeing this story from the newsletter, feel free to disregard)

Testimonials concur that we have one of the best newsletters around, and if you can’t get enough of our witticisms here, then The Courier provides you the opportunity to read more clever “jokes” and “references” from the comfort of your own inbox, every Tuesday.

“What else?” you might ask. Well, come the end of August we’ll be publishing the annual Issue 0 of Arthur. If you have a story you’d like to submit, pitch it to us basically anytime in the next, say, ten weeks and we’ll be happy to put it in there. Wouldn’t want it to be solely the editors’ show, after all.

We’re also gonna start posting articles on LinkedIn, because we feel like it. Connect with us, if you want. Just know your request might get buried under the hundreds of daily press releases in the “Social” tab of our Gmail inbox.

Other than that things will be much as they have been since the publication of Volume 58’s Issue 7. The three of us will write. We’ll write some more. We’ll publish some of it.

The summer is admittedly a time where we’re provided more affordance to get our freak on. It’s not unlikely you’ll see Abbigale dipping her toes back into the wonderful world of lit crit, Sebastian evangelizing America’s national passtime, or me doing whatever it is I do when I’m unsupervised.

This is the summer of making the most of it while we can because what is summer if not fleeting? Admittedly this might be why I was alarmed to find it was already summer so soon.

I can’t be the only one who spent the last few weeks of Augusts past wondering where exactly the time had gone, how I’d come within two weeks of back-to-school with what felt like fuck all to show for it.

For as much as summer is a time of joy and freedom, it is equally always finite. How many good summers do you get before you become too embroiled in work or grad school to really relish it?

Every summer implies the frigidity of its ending. Feel free to tweet that, but if you do so please credit me. 

To that end there’s a particular mode of summer expression with which I am particularly enamoured, that being melancholia. 

The songs I think of as “summery” are almost always operating on some nostalgic reverence for self-professed glory days. Hell, have you ever really listened to the lyrics of “Summer of ‘69?”

All good things must come to an end, and so too shall our time at Arthur. 

Don’t worry: as I say, we’re not going anywhere just yet, though as we intrepid three look forward to the ever-nearing Volume 59 we do so in a sort of bitter-sweet expectation.

Come this time next year, the three of us will disperse from our posts. 

In a week I am graduating from Trent University. 

In a year my co-editor Abbigale will do so in turn, as will I (again) (hopefully) from a Master’s program.

In the past year, my co-editor Sebastian and I have been shortlisted for multiple awards. Abbigale has co-edited multiple publications and been published all over the damn place. And together, as an editorial team, we have even managed to win a national journalism award. 

And while I’m sure none of us will ever be too “big,” really, for our beloved Arthur, there comes a time for everything, and to love Arthur is—to some extent—to let her go.

What I’m trying to say is, if you’re a writer, and in search of gainful employment in approximately eleven months, why not apply for our jobs?

The time has never been better to replace us (at the end of the publishing year) and all you have to do is write a couple articles and throw your (figurative) hat in a (figurative) ring. Easy enough, no?

After all, the thing that has always most petrified me about this job is whether or not we would be able to leave the masthead as good (or preferably, better) than we had found it. I am terrified of handing off Arthur to someone who is not every iota as obsessed with this masthead as I am. This feeling is shared by both my colleagues. 

Hence, we have decided to telegraph well in advance that we are not coming back (no matter how sweetly you ask us to).

What I take comfort in, at least, is that—while this is our last summer—when we hand off the keys to this office it will be our successor’s first summer, and there are few things I’ve loved more in my time at Arthur than working the summer serial.

I started working for Arthur in the summer of Volume 55. I’ve worked for Arthur every summer since, whether in the capacity of a lowly student journalist, or the now marginally more important one of student editor.

I have always loved the sights and sounds of Peterborough as I walk to Sadleir House every morning. The roar of construction. The heat radiating from tarmac and sidewalks baking, unobstructed by trees, under the midday sun. The smell of warm garbage on said sidewalks fighting to supplant the overwhelming odour of Quaker Oats.

No other city can really compare.

So whether you’re a new-ish reader or a long-serving Arthurian—or even just along for the ride—we hope you’ll join us this year as we embark on a journey considerably closer to home.

Will we all go to the movies again? Will the Board of Governors provide more vague platitudes? What will the TCSA get up to?

Reader, the present me cannot answer these questions for you. The only way to find out is to keep reading.