Dear British Weather...

I wish to complain bitterly about your upturn this month. I have been a card-carrying Celtic British Citizen for nearly 32 years, and in my life time have had at leat FIVE un-nerving experiences of your misbehaviour.

Medditerranean-style temperatures are NOT what I expect from you. Frequent drinking of bottles of water to replace the multitudes of liquid sweat rolling in torrents down my back is most unpleasant and unexpected. Also unplesant and unexpected is the gregarious and pleasant attitudes of the general public, and plesant smiles of passers-by as I waslk from the station to the train.

What is most disturbing to me is the fact that I have even seen people waiting in queues for buses, taxis, trains and lifts, in short, queueing of any kind, waiting for anything, engaged in smiling and plesant sociable conversations with complete strangers!!

Why must I be made to feel like a leper, scurrying from one place of shade to the next, to avoid ur wrath-filled, pain-filled burning anger? Why must I sadly wave goodbye to my extra limb, the comfort of my soul, my trusty umbrella? When will you end this torture of blinding heat and light, and let me scurry back to the darkness of my rain filled despair?

Where is the driving rain, the overcast sky, the blustering northerly wind? Where can good Celtic fair skinned citizens go for a good soaking and after-moan at home? Where are the exquisitely attuned negative experiences of the British weather system that keeps us in our place, and gives our misery life and breath? Who will we moan at now? When will we ever be miserable again?! I do believe this is the stuff of coup dé tats you do realise! Damn and blast it all, we are expecting a Traditional British Summer for God's sake!!

I hereby inform you that if you do not repent of this attitude forthwith, I will henceforth wear a pair of shorts, and reveal my alabaster-isk skin to the whole world....

THEN you'll be sorry...

Yours Unreservedly Annoyed & Red;

J.M. Cullen