Water water

There's an air of magnificence about the British weather. A lot of this is a result of Britain, although geographically relatively small in the global scale of things (not too small, you couldn't lose it under a breadcrumb on an atlas, although a chunk of scone would do the job), apparently extending through more climatic zones than your average continent. So it can be that the southern extreme can bask in Mediterranean sunshine (the price the Channel Islands pay for being close to France), while the northern extremes shiver under snow clouds (affording an excellent opportunity to stoke the peat fire and distill some more whisky). Meanwhile in the west Ireland is famously home to an infinite variety of 'wet' and in the east, farmers are worried about both water shortages and reprisal attacks from otters furious that their habitat is being pumped away to irrigate fields of cucumbers.

Moreover, there's a growing sense that the British weather has a sense of humour, and a sense of timing that would not disgrace a comic actor or a pissed housewife at a party choosing to give her husband a dressing down just as the party's 'mute moment' - the instant at which a room unexpectedly and unaccountably falls silent as all conversations (but one) simultaneously pause - happens.

It has been for years an accepted fact of climatic life that 'bank holiday weather' is best described as trying to keep your barbecue going in a thunderstorm. It could be because the majority of bank holidays are scheduled at times of the year when the weather is unpredictable (January to December) but more probably it is because the weather gods enjoy a laugh as much as anyone. Moreover, if one pictures a weather god, does one get the image of an easygoing bloke in shorts and sandals, giving all a sunny smile and clear skies? No, one gets the image of an angry, constipated looking Viking with a beard that has to be wrung out every two minutes, farting thunderbolts and pissing on the bonfires of a nation.

If there is anything more likely to promote precipitation than a bank holiday, it's the announcement of a hosepipe ban. And lo! It came to pass that a number of water companies in various parts of England, busy pissing away millions of gallons of water through cracked pipes and supplying buckets of the stuff to industry who then use it to mix with poison before dumping it in a nearby nature reserve, imposed a hosepipe ban this weekend.

The English do not like hosepipe bans. They love their hosepipes. They use them to water lawns and floral borders, to spray noisome children, to separate copulating dogs, to fill paddling pools, to wash their cars and, of course, to put out burning sheds and fences, aflame as a result of recent creosoting and carelessness, drunkenness or careless drunkenness near the barbecue.

Previously, hosepipe bans have been enforced by, among other things, helicopter surveillance. The expectation this year was that thanks to the development in airborne surveillance techniques, and with Bin Laden now found, there must be dozens of drone craft knocking about in hangers that could easily be re-tasked to criss-cross the yellow gardens of the South East looking for suspicious squares of green. Just make sure that the drone is disarmed so that the operator's usual response on spotting a likely target - bombing the shit out of it - is not an option.

But apparently in this case it won't be choppers, coppers, drones or eyes in the sky spying, it will be eyes over the fence, with neighbours being encouraged to shop their neighbours. This is something the English can really get behind, and despite appearances owes less to the Stasi and more to the school of 'try winning cucumber of the year at the village fete from behind bars, you tuber growing bastard'.

But given that it has rained every day since the ban was announced, one cannot escape the suspicion that there is a secret order high in the combined ranks of the National Farmers Union, RHS and several water companies who, on certain occasions, pray for rain, then sacrifice a goat.