In my last post I commented on the volume of rain we had experienced in the first few days of this year. Since then it was rained...and rained...and, well you get the idea. Showers. Torrential downpours. Sheets of the stuff driven by fierce winds. It has rained almost every day. So heavily was it bucketing down on Saturday that Wealdstone FC's home game (they play not far from my house) had to be halted for ten minutes. We have now, in beautiful Ruislip, had 50% more rain this month than in any January in the past 15 years. That is a huge amount of excess water and a lot of it is still lying in the back of my garden.
It has also been amazingly mild, with no overnight frosts of any consequence, and many bright intervals (in between the storms) so it feels like Spring has arrived, When I strolled round the local woods at the weekend I saw more squirrels than I have ever seen before in that area, gangs of them chasing up and down the leafless trees and foraging in competition with the two dominant bird species in these parts - pigeons and magpies.
The contrast with the freezing winters of the past few years is striking. This is the time of year I normally realise that I don't know where the ice scraper and anti-freeze have got to and there is a fruitless search of the inner recesses of the garage. As it happens I know where these usually-vital items are because I checked a few weeks ago but my point is that, even if I didn't know, it wouldn't matter.
Enough of matters meteorological. What of the commuting I hear you cry [I don't hear nuthin': Ed] There is nothing to report. I have had the longest extended break from work (barring a bit of illness) since I started my career back in the days when you said "new p" for a coin, Britain had a rollicking sailor-lad for PM and VAT was something horrendous that we were about to introduce as part of the conditions for joining something known as the EEC. So there we must leave it.
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