Summertime, and the Living Ain’t Easy

 Mike Bodnar has the summertime bad weather blues…

Image: Mike Bodnar

There is no better way to become an intense weather watcher than to be without a roof. We know this because we currently don’t have one.

Not that it’s blown away or anything – our builder has recently removed all the tiles from it, along with some of the rafters, and is now carefully building a new roof which will be the crowning glory of our house renovation. I can’t wait.

But wait I have to, and in the meantime we are covered in a patchwork of tarpaulins. When these are removed there is nothing between us and the firmament. As I joked on Facebook the other day when I posted a picture of the sunlit clouds above a few remaining rafters, ‘Look! We’ve had Sky installed!’

Look! We've got Sky!

However it’s been no joke. We chose ‘summer’ to have the roof done because, y’know, sunshine, warmth, blue skies. Bollocks. We’ve had precious little of any of those, just the odd ‘mini-heatwave’ as the tabloids would have it, interspersed with ‘cooler than average temperatures for this time of the year.’ And rain, rain and, well, need I say more? Yes I need.

So much rain that when I looked into the garden recently to see how our little boat was coping where it’s moored in the river there were all sorts of creatures queuing up two-by-two to get on it. Which confirmed it was a downpour of biblical proportions.

Meanwhile, as the rain came down in stair-rods, infiltrating any nook or cranny in the tarpaulins and overnight soaking our broadband modem, I am reading about heatwaves in Canada and Siberia (I mean, Siberia, seriously, WTF?), wildfires in Greece due to the extreme heat, and various other parts of the world where SPF 50 sunblock just isn’t going to cut it. California is running out of water, while at our place we have it running in.

During July I was brave enough to watch a bit of TV news (ref. a previous blog about bad news affecting my mental health) so I’m slowly reintroducing myself to world events, starting mainly with the weather. It didn’t do my mental state much good.

Of biblical proportions. Image: Daily Express

There seemed to be a pattern emerging, where the forecaster would stand beside the map of the UK and Northern Ireland and point to low pressure systems building in the Atlantic Ocean and heading for our green and pleasant land. This, they would apologetically warn, could bring widespread showers, thunder, lightning, and the possibility of flooding in some areas.

They would then – somewhat tentatively it has to be said – touch on the longer-range forecast which showed potential for improvement in about three days’ time. Always in about three days. But, bollocks again.

Image: Manchester Evening News

Three days later, guess what? Another surprise low pressure system forced down from the north and squeezed from the south brings rain, wind and yes flooding in some areas. But it’s okay, because in three days things are looking brighter! Well, the grass is always greener and all that, but you know why don’t you? Because rain.

And this cycle of a new low every three days or so has been ongoing through summer. If we’d bought this thing called ‘summer’ in a shop we’d be asking for our money back by now and complaining about the misleading information on the packaging.

Meanwhile, all around the UK– across to the west, above to the north-east, and over to the east and darn sarf it’s blistering – endless sun and heat, lovely warmth, sweltering. Okay, and on fire, but hey.

Under canvas

But then – hallelujah! A forecast last weekend promising us ten whole days of no rain, some sunshine, gentle breezes and okay temperatures of around 20 to 23 degrees Celsius from Tuesday. Yay! This would mean our builder and his helpers could crack on and get the new roof well advanced. I breathed a sigh of relief, and the animal pairs queuing up at our boat mooring scuttled, loped, flew, trotted and slithered back to their homes.

But no. By Thursday, after a measly two days of reasonably clement weather – nothing you could call ‘summer’ by any stretch – the clouds came over and guess what? Showers.

Luckily our builder has stoicism of biblical proportions, and, like Noah, continues to saw, screw, hammer and drill even as rain sweeps in from yet another shifty low pressure system that’s snuck its way across the Atlantic.

Stoic Trevor and Big Dee

Okay, we can blame climate change, which we’ve been told for some years now is about extremes: more intense heat here, more rain there, more misery everywhere. But knowing where the blame lies doesn’t change the forecast, or my current mood, or indeed my optimism.

So thank God for Trevor our builder (‘Treasure,’ my wife calls him), who I can hear on the roof right now whistling and singing as he works, even as the grey clouds gather ominously and the first few spots of the next downpour begin. I just hope it doesn’t take him forty days and forty nights to get the roof finished because by then it will be too late.

Now if you’ll excuse me I just need to go and do a better job of marking out
where the animals should queue up beside the boat. Just in case.