Summer to arrive next Sunday?

April  - the wettest April ever.

Parts of May - pretty bleedin' wet n all.

June the wettest June ever.

July- shaping up to be one of the wettest Julys ever.

What about the coming August?

 Better?

MUCH better if you give any credence to jet stream forecasts of more than a few days.

If you do think the jetstream can be forecast over a week in advance - then from next Sunday onwards (22nd July, or the first Sunday of the UK School summer holidays), we may be in for a bit of summer after all this year.

Through the tunnel

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?

Maybe!!!

Until then though, we are in for more low pressure systems flinging themselves at us from every which way - just as this week has seen yet more driving rain turn our lawn into a quagmire and fill up all the drainage ditches in the surrounding countryside yet again...

What have I seen this week (other than water on windows and windcreens)?

Well... in the two sunny moments this week, I did manage to see a comma (butterfly) sun itself on a bridge over the stream at work (I've hardly seen ANY butterflies this year in all this rain), plus a banded demoiselle on a bramble, overhanging the same stream.

I've hardly seen my facourite birds (swifts) all week but I have heard two pass south at height  - I think the majority of them have gone - WEEKS early. (On that subject I have heard some bad news re swifts from my father up in Fife this week also. He has swifts nesting - but not this year - they never returned at all this year - very worrying but quite common it seems in this terrible summer of 2012 - I guess we were lucky to have any buzz our house this year!)

There's been a few bees in the garden - carder bees and what I would call nectar bees  (or yellow faced bees) mainly - and the cornflowers, poppies and even the buddleja is beginning to flower now - is it right that most flowers are THREE WEEKS behind schedule because of this dark, cold, wet summer?)

I watched a growly spitfire (WWII plane) display low over Reading  (beneath the gun-metal grey skudding clouds) yesterday, as it flew towards Farnborough Air Show no doubt - which was lovely to see (and hear!)

Then this morning, before entering the local Waitrose for another weekly shop, Anna and I watched bemused, as high above us, on the disused and abandoned office building in the middle of our town, a lone peregrine (female) falcon sat, completely surrounded by town pigeons - one of which on the same ledge as her?!

I've never seen anything like it before - a big female peregrine allowing her lunch to sit beside her? They (the pigeons) must have known she was not hungry....

Anyway. Fingers crossed for a HUGE change in the weather after the week ahead.

You heard it here first...