New Records, Old Records

Unsurprisingly January was a record breaking month here in the UK.   Once again we have had the wettest month since records began.   For many that means being flooded out, people have been evacuated from their homes, businesses ruined, farms under water, roads and railways washed away.   The rain has been hard, steady and unrelenting.   I know that there are other places that are experiencing problems, and indeed other places where it is worse but that does not help us.   It is not so much that we have had floods, it's more that they keep going on, it is the continuous, unrelenting nature of the rain that is so crushing.

Since this wet weather is all coming from the West I am sure that our problems are linked with those of the American North East. Usually around the turn f the year our weather stops coming from the West and starts to come from the East, that means we get cold dry or snowy weather from Russia rather than mild wet weather from the Atlantic.   Every year we seem to get the wettest, the coldest, the hottest or the driest since records began, at what point will we accept that it is climate rather than weather?

I do not live in a flood risk area being half way up the highest hill in London but this weather is having a serious impact on my livelihood.   I am struggling to remember the last time I managed to work a full week, In November I invested in a snow shovel so I could do some useful work if we had much snow, I could go out and rescue my little old ladies, if I could get out myself.   Well that was a wasted investment!

Yesterday I managed to start removing some tree limbs that were threatening a customer's Garden Room.   It is all now safe, but ugly and I have left bits of branch lying around waiting to be cut up and removed.  

I have fences to treat, or indeed replace.   I have fallen trees to cut up and remove, I have shrubs and trees to prune and of course my own garden to tend.   I have got t the point where I am getting a little stir crazy as well as impoverished - Still I will try to be thankful for what I have been blessed with rather than dispair at what I am missing.

On a different tack I was surprised this morning to hear that Queen's Greatest Hits is now the all time best selling album.having shifted over six million copies it is now reckoned that one in three families own a copy.   I'm not one of them!