Damp Yankees

The summer of 2006 in the UK was beautiful. There were very few overcast days, let alone rainy ones. I remember telling a friend at the end of his 2 week hiking trip through Scotland that he was extremely lucky with the weather.

Little did I know how right I was to be. Last summer was dismal. We went to visit a friend in Germany (same latitude) at the end of June for a couple of weeks, and I never got to wear the shorts I brought along. Hardly any sunshine. We were looking forward to a better summer this year. Silly us.

Apparently this is the wettest August on record. At the moment there are flood warnings all over Great Britain. I feel sorry for the poor folks in the areas that are only just recovering from last year's floods. Our cats disappear when they go into the grass in our yard. My husband has been trying the entire summer to spread 2 coats of bitumen on the flat garage roof to waterproof it - he managed to get most of one coat on, and it only dried because he shielded it with a tarp. No luck on the second coat yet. Yesterday I was thinking about a short story I read in elementary school called "All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury. The first line is:

No one in the class could remember a time when there wasn't rain.

I'm building an ark.