Usually it rains just after I've washed the car. All I have to do is creep up on the old Nissan with a foaming bucket and the neighbours groan and whip the garden furniture into the garage double-quick. Every six months that car gets washed, whether it needs it or not.
But it wasn't me this time, honest. After weeks of glorious weather, the local water board announced a hosepipe ban last week, since when it's been chucking it down, and I'm getting very suspicious about any outfit with 'United' in its name.
I was going to write one of those pieces that has my reader splitting his sides with mirth, but blow me! I've been beaten to it.
http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/jacqui-morley/Look-at-it-this-way.6411470.jp
I read it and uttered a hollow laugh. We've got a garden like that, too. It's so wet that all we can grow is rice. From the plum trees at the very top of the garden, which you need a wet suit to reach in August and September when the fruit is ripe, to the house there's a fall of about two metres (more than six feet, grandad), and boy, does water move downhill or doesn't it?
This was our local Victoria Plum Falls in September two years ago - rather more water coming downhill all at once than our 10cm main drain (4", pops) can cope with. We wouldn't mind so much if it was the sea that had breached the sea wall, or the river that had burst its banks, but for heaven's sake, this was just rain.
Hosepipe ban? Pshaw. The next time it rains I'll ask United to get round here pretty sharpish with a portable reservoir. Fill it no time, we could.
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