Friday

The other day the weather man (that's not him pictured by the way) challenged some of our understanding of weather patterns. Because it has been cloudy and wet on occasions, although we have had warm sunshine also, the population runs around complaining that it was "Better in the old days!" The man looked at the weather patterns over the past hundred years or so and pointed out that the last decade has been the warmest! Indeed while the impression we have is one of gloom and damp, in fact in the past fifty years it was no better.

I have known this as being poor, and how, we never got further than Cowdenbeath for a holiday! Most of ten it was Dunfermline, lucky us! As the Edinburgh holidays started in the first week of July we ought to have expected sunshine and joy. However I used to wander about the town drifting through Dunfermline Glen, donated by the nice Mr Carnegie, and my enduring memory is of damp pathways and dripping trees. That and hanging over the bridge just outside the station as the trains, all steam driven of course, puffed past. It was wet their also often. The fact remains that the UK is next to the Atlantic Ocean. This runs for about 3000 miles or so and is wet and cold. When it evaporates in the heat (heat?) it drops it all on Britain and Ireland, mostly on the west coast of course. It was ever thus yet we complain and remember the days of our childhood when the sun shone all day everyday! And as I cast my mind back it did too! Which speaks volumes for my memory.

I wonder if the folks in Greece walk about telling of the days of their youth when it was really hot?