After a succession of summers when we were pleased if the sun shone for more than three consecutive days, a winter that brought the Beast from the East and a spring the colour of pewter, we at last are experiencing the best summer since 1976.

It is lovely to enjoy the shade without being driven indoors by a spiteful wind, lovely to see Weymouth Bay rival the intense blue of the sky, good to know that holidaymaking families are enjoying our beautiful English coast and countryside.

But I suppose it was inevitable. They could not stay silent any longer. Whenever we are enjoying something, the Doom and Gloom Police put a damper on it.

This time, it is the weather. It is Hot. You know, the sort of weather we normally seek abroad. It is so unusual, it surely predicts something akin to the Apocalypse.

Listen carefully and you may hear the Four Horses snorting and pawing the ground.

Yes, grass resembles coir matting. Yes, we must water our gardens, but some plants, begonias, geraniums and sunflowers, for example, are loving the heat.

Farmers are having a hard time, but judging from the number of heavily laden farm vehicles, there should be a bumper hay and straw harvest.

I am sure they will manage, after all, those in the time of Joseph (he of the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat) did pretty well all those years ago.

If predictions are needed, I am going to make one.

I foresee that, as always, Nature will hold her own, in spite of us foolish humans, and by October at the latest, we shall all be paddling, not in the sea, but in the rain.

Susan Gow,
Ringstead Crescent, Overcombe Weymouth