"December brings us sleet and rain
Then its bloody January again" sang Flanders and Swann in a 'A drop of a Hat' and my favourite couplet :
'In July the sun is hot
Is it shining? No its not'

It may be boring to drone on about our climatic conditions but they do weigh heavily on our semi consciousness as day after day its dreich and sunless. Its not quite true to say we can't remember when we last saw the sun but it is becoming harder as each cloudy, damp period of 24 hours -half pitch dark half gloom-passes. Soon the bores will be on to it 'I can't remember such a long period without a glipmse of the sun since I was down pit before the great strike of 80 something' And the forecast on Creefax 'Borders and SW Scotland' continues to mislead with its 48 hours ahead prenogistications of sunny skies and at the worst, Chief Broken Cloud. Perhaps that's why Berwick has been dropped-prophecies of 'driving rain, gale force winds, visibility of 50 inches' are bad for morale if deadly accurate. Perhaps we should invest in them new fangled sun shine lamps which wake you up with soothing music, or sounds of a distant ocean and increasingly strong light so as you can enjoy July in Lanzarotte without having to leave your bed-or just nip out to open the shutters-see it is January in Hutton, on the front lawn anyhow, and then nip back into bed again.

In Hutton today is dreich,
and will remain
from weich
to weich

(From ' Swann Centre to Flanders Fields'-a Border anthology of bad verse)  ¶ 9:30 AM