Rain Reigns Again

As I write, Sunday afternoon is morphing into Sunday evening and the weekend will soon be over. For the next five days, work will dominate yet again, but I don't feel that I have had my money's worth out of Saturday and Sunday. And I suspect that I am not alone in that sentiment.

August is traditionally the best summer month, when we like to spend as much time as we can out of doors in the sunshine. This should have been a weekend for picnicking in a field or by a sandy cove; for mowing the lawn and picking broad beans; for lazing in a deck chair under a shady tree in the garden and losing oneself in a book. If only. Just like last weekend, and many weekends before it, to say nothing of the weekdays in between, the weather has been decidedly un-seasonal.

As I look out the French doors of my study I see not a pale pink summer light bathing the garden in evening warmth but a windy grey drizzle shrouding everything in gloom. Yesterday a friend and I foolishly attempted to combine fresh air and culture by visiting a pretty Wiltshire village with a National Trust property much used in period dramas. We drove all the way there, ventured out from the car and walked up the main drag, got soaked and retreated in the car back to Somerset without even setting foot in the magnificent edifice we had travelled miles to see. We'd have been better off spending the afternoon in a cinema. Today, much closer to home, it was a similar story. We went out. We got wet.

I've never been one to enjoy toasting myself on a beach towel in the sun. I don't even require it to be that hot before I am happy, but I do like it to be dry. This is the second soggy summer we have had to endure. I am beginning to fear for the nation's psyche. We need summer sunshine to prepare us for the dark, cold days of winter. The much talked-about credit crunch might be filling everyone with gloom now, but imagine what it's going to be like to be absolutely broke AND suffering from seasonal affective disorder in December. If that's not good enough reason to lower the interest rate, I don't know what is.