yet more weather

No one who lives in the UK needs to be told that the weather continues unabated, and I can’t be the only one who’s thinking that surely now February is here we might expect some proper winter weather rather than all this wind and rain.

The phrase February fill dike came to mind. Googling it I found this article from the Guardian two years ago, which reports that “southern, central and eastern regions […] are teetering on the brink of drought”. It also says, somewhat surprisingly, that February tends to be one of the driest months of the year.

Not wanting to get political, I’ll just mention that I was told as a child that “bad governments bring bad weather.”

Well, whether drought or flood, we seem to have been having bad weather for years. The poem below was written in January 2001:

English Weather

There’s a tap been left dripping in Heaven
by an angel who washed out his socks;
he washed and he rinsed and he wrung them
unaware that the sink always blocks.

Now he’s finished, and gone on his business
of singing and learning to play
on a harp that is golden as sunshine.
Down on Earth life’s decidedly grey.

The tap has been dripping and dripping,
the water’s come over the brim;
Mankind is developing webbing
and gills, and has started to swim.

What they need up in Heaven is a plumber
who would fix pipes and taps at one go,
who would change all those worn out old washers,
stop them leaking on us down below.

Here on Earth we’re preparing more sandbags,
not sure that the tide has yet turned;
can it be that the Lord’s not omnipotent
where getting a plumber’s concerned?