Good morning to you all. I hope everything is fine and dandy with you! We’ve had a mixed week weather-wise so I may have to hold off on last week’s pronouncement that we were about to enjoy uninterrupted glorious sunshine for the next seventeen months. Smatterings of sunshine, lots of cloud and grey skies, a fair number of showers interspersed with the occasional deluge of Biblical proportions. In other words, a typical English summer. Continue reading “5 August 2012”
29 July 2012
Credit where credit is due – the BBC predicted that the Jet Stream was about to move and consequently bring us a spell of decent summer weather. Naturally, I doubted the accuracy of the report and put it down to wishful thinking or an attempt to bury the unremitting stream of bad news with something sure to cheer up the British public. Now I realise that the BBC is 100% accurate in everything they report, I will never doubt their weather forecasts again and I am delighted to be able to set the record straight. Continue reading “29 July 2012”
22 July 2012
Boy, have we got a bumper edition for you this week – lousy weather and the optimistic prediction from the BBC (so it must be true) that it will all change in time for the Olympics, a technological misfortune, freedom for the Naked Rambler and a trio of farcical Government mishaps – the Olympic security disaster, misguided cuts to flood defence programmes and the collapse of the Education Secretary’s “Flagship” Free Academy. Continue reading “22 July 2012”
15 July 2012
This week we have been mainly having . . . Oh, I used that already.
It may surprise you to know that we had a very pleasant day on Friday, in contrast to the continuing gloom and deluges we have enjoyed throughout the rest of the week. But on Friday, in the early evening particularly, it was very pleasant – the skies were relatively clear, the sun shone and Ms Playchute and I even ventured out and sat on the patio drinking some very pleasant wine from the Languedoc. Opportunities to sit out have been decidedly limited this summer and we had almost forgotten what a pleasant way to round off a busy week sitting out in the sunshine with a bottle of wine can be. Don’t worry – Saturday it rained for much of the day. Continue reading “15 July 2012”
8 July 2012
There was a television programme a few years back called “The Fast Show” which our English readership will remember. One of the recurring sketches each week was the appearance of Jesse who pronounced on various topics. This unkempt, dishevelled tramp would emerge from a dilapidated shed and announce that this week he had been mostly eating . . . boiled cabbage or Brussels sprouts, etc.
So, in fond memory of (and with apologies to) a pleasant enough comedy programme:
This week we have mostly been having . . . RAIN! Continue reading “8 July 2012”
1 July 2012
My optimistic prediction that the pattern of improving weather would continue proved to be exactly that – wildly optimistic. I would have been content if the pattern of one nice day, two nice days, etc. were simply to increase in an arithmetic pattern; I wasn’t necessarily hoping for or expecting a geometric progression, i.e., one nice day, two nice days, four nice days, etc. What we seem to have now is a cyclical pattern, i.e., one nice day, two nice days, one nice day, etc. for we did, indeed, have one nice day this week (and that’s probably being somewhat generous with the definition of “nice”). On Thursday it was mainly dry (in our area, anyway – those further north are still clearing up after the floods they enjoyed), the sun shone (a bit) and the temperature was warm (77 degrees F, 25 degrees C) and humid. In between the downpours and deluges, one could almost convince oneself it was a good day.
And this just in – this has been the wettest June since records began and, similarly, the three month period from April to June is also the wettest April to June since records began. I guess our perception that the weather has been pretty lousy since that warm, sunny spell we had in March is just about right.
24 June 2012
Well, we had a 100% improvement in the weather this week: last week we had one nice day; this week it was two (Tuesday and Wednesday). If this trend continues we might actually get to enjoy a decent run of tolerable weather. On the other hand, Wimbledon starts this week and that’s generally a precursor to a couple of weeks of even lousier weather. So, who knows? Continue reading “24 June 2012”
17 June 2012
Good morning to you all on what I hope is a pleasantly pleasant day wherever you might find yourself. We had a very pleasant day this week: on Wednesday the sun shone, it was warm and the skies were clear. I only mention this because it was in such marked contrast to our weather the rest of the week – unremitting rain, wind and gloom. We received the following from Erik Benson which just about sums it all up. Continue reading “17 June 2012”
10 June 2012
Good morning to you all and I hope you are all in as fine a fettle as it is possible to be. Of course, much of this week has been all about the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee which has succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations in distracting both the press and the general population from the economic turmoil in which we find ourselves. Although the weather has been lousy, there has been much pomp and circumstance, great waving of flags and rousing three cheers. I should have bought bunting futures – bunting manufacturers must have made enough to retire on the sales leading up to this past weekend. Even I have to concede – one thing the Brits do well is put on pageants such as this. Fortunately, for those of us who are not particularly Royalist in our leanings, the various media sites have put together a collection of video clips which mean that we didn’t have to sit through the whole four days of nonsense; there are some excellent time lapse sequences which allow you to experience the events in a matter of moments. Continue reading “10 June 2012”
3 June 2012 – Penelope’s Sixty Sensational Celebratory Surprises
As I hinted last week, we’ve been busier than a one-armed wall paper hanger preparing ourselves for Penelope’s Sixty Sensational Celebratory Surprises which culminated in a grand surprise birthday party last Saturday. This had been literally days in the preparation yet in spite of the general perception that Greg was probably incapable of organising the proverbial piss-up in a brewery, the day and evening actually went off reasonably well. Most importantly, Ms Playchute appears to have been genuinely surprised by the collection of friends, family and acquaintances who gathered in our back garden to greet her.
Continue reading “3 June 2012 – Penelope’s Sixty Sensational Celebratory Surprises”