Tuesday 15th July 2025, 12.45pm (day 5,073)
15th July is the feast day of St Swithin, and according to the legend, if it rains on St Swithin’s Bridge in Winchester on this day it will rain for another 40 days. Apparently there is a certain basis for this: this is about the time of year when the jet-stream kind of settles in and decides where it is going to sit for the rest of the summer: over Britain (we get wet) or to the north of it (we stay dry)? I don’t know what the weather was like in Winchester today but in Hebden it was chucking it down, the wettest day for months, let alone weeks. If the legend is true let me be the first to come out with that old chestnut, “That’s the summer over.”
Being 42 