Land of Hope and Glory…

The shape of things to come – rain, rain and more rain!

It’s the first day of the holidays for me and it has been raining solidly for the past six hours. The prognosis for a happy outdoor summer (the only one at all possible for two overly active boys) is vanishing fast and their mother has retreated back to bed to view it all with a jaundiced eye, muttering darkly the words: “It was never like THIS when I was a child…”

As I lie here warm and dry in bed, I scamper lightly over the Internet searching vainly for a glimmer of sunshine, but however hard I peer, all I see is forecasts for rain.

The Met Office confirms my own thoughts about June - the wettest since records began in 1910.

No shit Sherlock!

But however much I read about it, however much I hear about it; there is a perverseness in the character of my countrymen that I hold true to; I don’t believe a word of it.
Come off it, if we really believed that all we’d be getting is grey skies, cold and rain, do you think, for one minute, that we’d carry on living here?

No, the sheer joy of being British, of living on this rain sodden island, is the fact that it MAY NOT rain in our little patch of England despite what the forecasters say.

I put it to you that the British are eternal optimists. A nation full of hope over adversity

We buy BBQs, strappy tops and flip flops bang on the dot of British Summer Time and dare the summer not to be as good as our memories make it, flying in the face of unpalatable truths.

(I feel a rousing British Anthem emerging from the background now: pomp and glory…)

Resolute we stand soaked to the skin as we eat our strawberries and cream, joyfully revelling in OUR summer and woe betide the Johnny Foreigner who says to us: “Gee is it always this wet?” as they huddle pathetically in the doorway at Harrods peering out into the interminable grey

We’ll drip quietly and look scornfully at them and their temerity.

“No, of course not, you should have been round in the Summer of 2007. Flash floods, whole towns cut off…”

Ah yes, the Summer of 2007, when Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire was totally cut off and flood waters seeped in to the Abbey for the first time in 247 years…

Maybe it’s not our stalwart stance in the face of adversity that makes us what we are, rather a collective amnesia about the weather, especially in the Summer…

Temptation, thrills and flooded lanes...

It’s raining.

A lot.

Which is good

Because we need the rain.

But it’s bad

Because I think I may have to give into temptation and I don’t think that is wise.

The temptation in question is whether or not to drive my car through the seriously big puddles on the lanes.

You know the ones

They stretch for about 20 or 30 yards and fill the lane side to side.

The boys spy them and then get wildly overexcited

“Go on Mum! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!” they chant.

And the temptation is so great

Foot down, second gear and drive straight without stopping, remembering where the lane dips driving on the upside first then the down keeping to the shallowest waters.

Now this was OK when I had Dora Disco the Land Rover and indeed OK when the field drains weren’t working as well as they do now. But with torrents of water spewing from all sides into the lane and flooded as far as the eye can see and suddenly I am not so sure.

Not quite so sure it is a very good idea.

I mean I love the Silver Dream Machine, my Bluemotion Golf Estate but I don’t think it was built for boating.

“It’s too dangerous,” I say. “We will have to wait until the water subsides.”

So I reverse all the way back to the main road and drive the long way to school. The Boys are clearly disappointed. This way is not very exciting. Not thrilling at all.

It’s much more fun to get into school late because you’ve got stranded in the middle of a flood and have to wade your way out.

I feel for them and suddenly understand why my father used to drive across the frozen St John River in Canada when we were stationed there in the early 1970s. He relished terrifying and thrilling the women in his family. Seriously he used to take our Volkswagen car drive off the road and down the banks of the frozen river then drive across it stopping half way to take photographs. I remember waiting for what seemed like hours while he did this scaring myself silly with thoughts of the ice breaking beneath us. He never put us in danger he always knew it was safe, he just didn’t tell us as such. We had to trust him. I was five years old. And now 40 years later I understand why he did it as I thrill and terrify my own five year old.

I will make sure I can drive through but I won’t be telling my boys I have checked it out first – I mean where’s the fun in that!