When it rains it pours

It's very quiet on the roads today, isn't it?

“...and that’s why this particular budgie won’t be dancing on the ceiling any time soon. And now it’s over to Simon for the weather.”

“Thanks, Kirsty. Your forecast for the weekend, then – Saturday will be cloudy, with sudden cataclysmic outbreaks of rain, whilst Sunday looks even worse, with a high chance of apocalyptic conditions throughout the day, and a light south easterly breeze. Temperatures around normal for the time of year. The outlook for next week? Well, in one word – Biblical. So, not looking great, Kirsty!”

“No indeed, Simon. Definitely not barbeque weather – unless you can strap it to a canoe. If you survive, see you on Monday. Goodnight!”

OK, so that might seem a tad far-fetched, but according to the Met Office, there’s a significantly increased risk of winter downpours, which they’re cheerily describing as “unprecedented”.

By chucking a large amount of data into a supercomputer and waiting for a bit, the Met Office officers were met with a report in their offices which wasn’t exactly super. A double-whammy of the numbers coughed-up by the jumped-up laptop are particularly alarming.

For England and Wales, there’s a 34% chance of an extreme event happening somewhere each year. Think extensive flooding and rainfall totals exceeding anything seen before. To compound that already scary thought, some of these events could bust existing records by as much as 30%.

Nearly a third more water dropping out of the skies than Cumbria copped over the winter of 2015-16? And it could happen sometime soon, rather than having been the once-in-a-lifetime event widely reported at the time?

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty happy with where our World Heritage Site-worthy lakes are currently located. I’ve got used to them staying roughly the same size and not wandering around too much. The rivers are also rather lovely if they stick to their existing routes. It’s when they put a bit of weight on and make a break for it that things tend to turn decidedly unpleasant and dangerous.

I don’t want a lake in my living room – it won’t match the wallpaper, for starters. And anything that flows through your house is highly unlikely to be good, especially if your tea is on the other bank.

Let’s face it, the emergency services and Army have plenty to do as it is, without having to show up at your upstairs bedroom window in an inflatable boat to rescue you and the cat.

If insurance premiums went up sharply following the billions of pounds worth of damage caused by the most recent events, imagine what they’ll cost if flooding becomes as regular an occurrence as someone leaving Take That.

I’ve been secretly stashing old pallets in my cellar, and searching for “how to build your own ark” books on Amazon. I’ve got enough tins of custard stashed to last for several months at sea on whatever they call the new ocean that will soon engulf South Cumbria.

Care to join me? (Bring your own dessert topping.)

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in The Mail, on the 28th of July 2017. You can view the web version on their site here The print edition ran it with the title "Rising tide of rain hysteria".

If some of the stormy downpours we've had here recently are anything to go by, I can easily see these predictions coming true - and it's (supposedly) summer at the moment. Scary...

(CD A-Z: Queen's "A Day At The Races". Maaaaaarvellous.)

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"It's all gone quiet..." said Roobarb

If, like me, you grew up (and I’m aware of the irony in that) in the ‘70s, February was a tough month, with the sad news that Richard Briers and Bob Godfrey had died. Briers had a distinguished acting career and is, quite rightly, fondly remembered most for his character in ‘The Good Life’. Amongst his many roles, both serious and comedic, he also lent his voice to a startling bit of animation that burst it’s wobbly way on to our wooden-box-surrounded screens in 1974. The 1970s seemed to be largely hued in varying shades of beige, with hints of mustard yellow and burnt orange, and colour TV was a relatively new experience still, so the animated adventures of a daft dog and caustic cat who were the shades of dayglo green and pink normally reserved for highlighter pens, must have been a bit of a shock to the eyes at the time. It caused mine to open very wide indeed. Roobarb was written by Grange Calveley, and brought vividly into life by Godfrey, whose strange, shaky-looking sty...

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