Summer is nearly here - the season for ice-cream vans and holding hands, flip-flops and frisbees, sorbets and sunburn, beer gardens and barbeques. But chances are that the summer of 2009 is going to be another complete and utter washout and Vitamin D intake is going to be at an all time low. Therefore, here at SY we’ve helpfully compiled our guide to the best ways for you to enjoy those warm but rainy days and embrace the soggy summer!

- Put on a wetsuit and pretend it’s sunny.

- Turn up the heating in your house, don’t consume any liquid at all for 4 days and then run outside into the rain with your head back and mouth wide open; you’ll get a whole new appreciation for precipitation!

- Get some of the lads together and head off for a game of football in the mud; aka muddy footy; aka mutty!

- Take a ridiculously overeager interest in meteorology and bore all your mates to death about how/why/where rain comes from.

- If the sun refuses to make himself known, then just take the party inside! Indoor BBQs, indoor camping and indoor picnics are just as fun.

- Pick up a hobby, anything to pass the time productively; think crafts, knitting, origami, crocét, baking or make a piece of art out of the raindrops; Tony Hart (RIP) wouldn’t have let a little bit of rain spoil his fun!

- Recreate famous film scenes that were shot in the rain. I’m thinking Spiderman (upside-down kiss), The Matrix: Revolutions (lots of fighting) or The Shawshank Redemption (crawling through a pipe of faeces then collapsing in a pond).

- Indoor games with your friends can be brilliant if you pick a good one. It might sound lame, but ‘Hunt The Thimble’ is a bottomless pit of enjoyment. Or, to spice things up, any game can easily be turned into a drinking/strip version.

- Attempt a Guinness World Record; popular ones include the longest time spent lying in the bath, TV endurance tests or the most number of 5-knuckle-shuffles in 24 hours.

- Don’t let the rain spoil your fun; see it as an adventure and go camping anyway! You’ll come out with a great story at the end of it.

- Create a mini-water world/amusement park and then send ants down flumes made from toilet rolls.

- Take up surfing. I am reliably informed that the surf is usually good when it’s raining.

- Play ‘The YouTube Game’; basically each of your friends comes up with a random, exciting word then you type them all into YouTube to see what pops out (eg. “midget” + “party”). You’ll be surprised how addictively fun it is!

- Creatively funnel the water from the gutter into a more productive system, perhaps using it to power a small water-wheel which in-turn could power a small hi-fi?

- Try playing some timeless classics like puzzles and jigsaws, or if nothing floats your boat, try inventing your own board game, Blue Peter-styley.

- Collect as much of the rain water as you can and hoard it in your house, pretending you’re the bad guy out of Quantum of Solace; it’s “the world’s most precious resource” after all.

- Race paper boats and twigs down streams like you’re in Winnie The Pooh.

- Dare your mates with various rain endurance tests; who can keep their eyes wide open looking up at the rainy sky the longest?

- Strap plastic bags to your feet, get a power kite and go skidding in the park.

- Turn into the ultimate green campaigner; it’s global warming making it rain anyway, isn’t it? Get all preachy with morons who drive too much and don’t reuse plastic bags and send strongly worded letters to China and India’s manufactory industries.

- Find yourself a girlfriend/boyfriend and just have sex marathons.

- Take up heavy drinking or extreme drug taking; anything to dull your senses so you don’t even notice it’s raining and go trip out in the park anyway.

- Go rainbow spotting.

Matt Whittle