What a relief to be able to say “Phew!” without having to mop a dripping brow!  

After so many years of poor summers we all longed for a ‘blue sky summer’ but as the years have gone by we discover that coping with the heat is definitely not as easy as it was when we were children. . . I do remember that 40 years ago we left the house in the mornings but were not altogether sure our black and white timber house, surrounded by trees, would be nothing but a smoking ruin by the time we arrived home after work.  Not everyone was so lucky at that time when we were living in north Hampshire – not in Greece, Canada, Australia or California.

Life seems to get more complicated every year.  Politics give us no rest or peace and physical calamities pile one on top of the other.  While some people argue about the reality of ‘climate change’ others are convinced that the current fluctuations in the weather are just the way things are and have been in all the climate history of the world.  I wonder whether the ‘deny-ers’ just describe the Ice Age as being an exceptionally long and difficult spell of weather?