This morning, there’s a spherical amber vision just about identifiable through West Yorkshire’s hazy cloud cover. This sight, scarcely witnessed of late courtesy of the seemingly endless attendance of foreboding nimbus aerosols, a token Zeusian gesture to remind UK citizens we’re not hallucinating. It is indeed summertime!

The god of the skies, perhaps sending us a timely reminder that “Yes, I know it’s summer and I’ve no problem furnishing you Brits some warmer temperatures. However, be warned, one sight of anyone in Speedos and the rainstorms will return quicker than you can say budgie smugglers!!”

It’s possibly a sign of how grim May and June’s weather has been that I feel moved to write about solar rays nearly penetrating the east Leeds clouds, which are less robust of late. The sun not even being granted full exposure to provide the Yorkshire populous with a natural source of vitamin D, or motion them to crack open the Ambre Solaire spf 20***.

*** – Other sun screen products are available. None, though, are as effective as the dense foreboding cloud cover of the previous fortnight.

The rain was so bad earlier in the week, on viewing the torrential rain, my wife Karen was moved to comment “Blimey, it’s throwing it down out there, Gary!” An observation that, as I’d not lost my sight, didn’t really need relaying to yours truly. My spouses paucity of descriptive detail going a long way to answering why she failed with a youthful attempt to get a job as forecaster on TV magazine show ‘Good Morning Britain’.

Poet William Wordsworth famously wrote in prose “I wandered lonely as a cloud”. Well one thing for sure, in the last two weeks or so, nimbus aerosols of visible liquid droplets haven’t resided in isolation over the UK. Far from being lonely, they’ve existed as part of a massed army providing meteorological misery to all but the nations flora and fauna. Only gardeners rejoicing at these pains in the butt filling their water butts.

I wrote the first five paragraphs of this narrative in the Costa coffee shop at The Springs Retail Park, Leeds. At the time, in a rare fit of optimism, I’d indicated the precipitation and cold were abating and sunnier/warmer times were on the horizon – Positioned in the coffee shop, as I was at that time, the horizon of which I spoke was an easterly direction towards Garforth.

After concluding paragraph five I had a hiatus from writing and left Costa – A consequence of promising to drive my wife to Leeds Railway Station. Simultaneously to me climbing into my car, skies darkened and precipitation made yet another unwelcome appearance….. Come on admit it, who the hell donned the Speedos?!!

This swift change in weather behaviour making the earlier mockery of my spouses inept forecasting skills deservedly backfiring on me. One of my many erratic personalities (Archie) who deems himself an accomplished meteorological forecaster, being revealed as a charlatan. A fraud who not only can’t accurately predict long term rainfall patterns, he can’t even guess the weather twenty minutes in advance.

Archie a misguided, vain glorious character who is highly adept at antagonising peers with his arrogance and his legendary habitual flatulence. Behavioural traits that make him the least favourite of my capricious personalities……. Well, apart from Grenville who believes his occasional use of the term habeas corpus, along with being an avid watcher of law court drama Rumple of the Bailey during his youth, qualifies him to make ‘informed’ observations on UK criminal law statutes.

When my kids were small, I taught them the children’s poem advocating “Rain, rain, go away!…. Come again another day!” Prose in grumpy middle-age I’ve recently felt moved to amend slightly to “Rain, rain, b***** off!….. Come again when the hosepipe ban kicks in!!”