BBC weather forecasters. You've got to love 'em. In the same way that Mother Theresa loved lepers perhaps...but still. According to this morning's statistics Weymouth (or somewhere) saw the most hours of sunshine yesterday (eleven of them apparently) in what was otherwise an extremely boggy, damp and miserable Britain.
Which is odd because when I got out of bed at seven o'clock yesterday morning there wasn't a cloud in the sky over Fleetwood. In fact it was so hot and sunny and cloudless and blue and stifling I had to water the back garden at least three times during the morning in order to prevent it from shrivelling into a crisp.
This continued until the sun sank about eleven o'clock last night.
Quick calculation...ten plus...removes sock...eight...removes other sock...add six...removes third sock with a worried expression...minus fifteen...that makes at least sixteen hours of solid, fifteen carat sunshine over Fleetwood yesterday and not a snotling of drizzle, rain, fog or seagull piss in sight.
All in all, despite the atrociously large license fee, despite the Met Office with its flotilla of computers, despite the insanely huge wages of Michael Fish and that bird with the big knockers off Channel Five, despite all that...the truth is the Father Christmas mobile made from fir-cones that my nephews thrust upon me last Christmas and that I now keep in a shoebox in the top of the wardrobe, is considerably more accurate.
I know that Santa's working because yesterday the shoebox split when his pinecone head swelled to the size of a pomegranate with gout and his knob made the crepe-paper angels blush.