On Mar 26, 10:26*am, "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:
Well the media and indeed the weather forecasts most certainly
give the impression that the SE/E is 'crying out for rain'.

That's the impression I have as well. There is very little water in
reserve in the SE and to bring things up to normal would require a
considerable amount of rain. Like a month or so of non-stop heavy
rain, as in several mm/hour type heavy rain. I don't think that is
very likely, there might be a few days but not enough.

As for barbecues - awful things. *Crap food cooked and consumed in
the maximum of discomfort just so you can pretend you're in the
outback along with the jolly swag-men and their leathery sheilas.

And the usw 'grumpy old man' award for March goes to.......

Naw BBQ's are damn awful. The stench of burning flesh and haze of
smoke was terrible when ever there was a nice evening down in St
Albans. Had to shut the windows to keep both out. Glad when we moved
up here, then we get F&M and the smell from the pyres 10 to 15 miles
away....


I actually quite like the smell of barbecues, smoke and
everything, probably because having been an industrial chemist I have
olfactorily idiosyncratic tastes though I draw the line at pyridine
and other nitrogenous heterocycles, especially tryptophan derivatives
(polite term for ****).
In the media the weather is never mentioned in measured terms,
as everyone knows. So "Crying out for rain" = "Getting a bit dry".
It certainly is, though there will be no clamour until the taps are
turned off, except perhaps from farmers, who have something to lose.

Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, Surrey.