Nature Notes Special - Floody Hell!

Water used to be our friend, our playmate.  We shower in the stuff, we add bubbles to it and bath in it, sometimes with candles.  We add bubbles to it and we drink the stuff, sometimes with a slice of lemon.  We water our plants with it, we water ourselves with it, we fill big pools and swim in it, we fill slightly smaller pools and communally bath in it after rugby games.  We even swim with dolphins in it, we like water so much that we can stop thinking 'fish poo' for long enough to splash about with Flipper in it.
Recently though, water has become the implacable foe, the slow creeping menace that inches towards the nation's doorsteps, or the rushing torrent, the same brown as the underwear of anyone unlucky enough to be caught in it.  The floods have come, and come, and come.
It is now, officially, beyond a joke.  What started before Christmas as the 'storm surge' turned to filthy weather at Christmas, leaving people with no power, a big raw turkey and realising that KFC for your Christmas dinner isn't really all that bad, as it means no sprouts and extra chips all round.  Ironically there was an advert doing the rounds over the festive season that posed the question 'can you barbecue a turkey?'.  Yes, you can is the answer, but you'd only know that if you had a telly, meaning you had power, in which case, you wouldn't be wrestling a reluctant barbecue from the back of the shed where it's become entangled with hose pipe, bicycles, cobwebs and the other Summer paraphernalia, but instead sitting snug getting hammered on red and waiting for the oven timer to ping before forgetting to put the scouts on, like any civilised person.
For future reference, yes, you can barbecue a turkey.  A mate of mine did it one year, even though he didn't have to.  A Webber kettle barbecue is best, lots of coals that are well banked for a constant heat, then drink red wine until its ready and you are pissed enough not to notice you've barbecue a turkey.  As with most cooking, it's all in the preparation, in this case, uncorking breakfast.
As the days turned to weeks, the rain continued to fall.  The television showed spectacular pictures of huge waves crashing over sea defences and nightly heart-rending images of flooded front rooms.  There was nothing to be done, it would appear.

Then Prince Charles visited a flooded village.
Several things then happened, very quickly indeed.
The first was that question 'what use is the monarchy in the twenty first century?' was answered, as the Prince got blanket TV coverage and sympathised with the plight of the flooded villagers.  He then, one imagined, 'phoned the prime minister and gave him a Royal bollocking.  Because the next day the prime minister was chairing the government's emergency committee after which the army was deployed.
Following Prince Charles's example, politicians unwisely began popping up in wellies in villages.  Unlike the Prince, they were bollocked by very angry villagers who wondered what the fucking fuck they had been doing for the last few weeks.  Hint: if the answer was not 'filling sandbags' they you looked like a prize tool.
The other question that was answered was 'Is there more to UKIP than racism?'.  Yes, yes there is.  There's stupidity too.  UKIP's leader, Nigel Farage, was seen dressed in what one imagines a repressed country squire might look like, in suspiciously new wax jacket and wellies, droning on about how we should cut the foreign aid budget and use it for flood defences.  The BBC bloke then asked what he was doing to get relief money from Europe, which is available.  The answer - f**k all, Mr Farage apparently believing that the entire structure of the European Union closes down on a Sunday.  Next item on the news, EU officials making a statement about some ruling or other, on a Sunday.
As with many disasters, this adversity has brought out the best in people.  Communities coming together to help one another, the British Army doing their usual spectacular job in crap conditions, and monarchy leading.

Wheather or not

The exception to dumbing down of broadcasting is the weather forecast. It’s certainly become more ‘user friendly’, with little animations and so on replacing cloud symbols, but it’s all underpinned by hard science and the forecasts are supported by the sort of men who have evolved long pointy chins through stroking them while considering ‘is it going to rain tomorrow’?

Forecasting is not an exact science. From the days of sages looking at the flight of birds, through rustic types looking at seaweed and pine cones nailed to sheds right through to modern computer generated forecasts using data drawn from weather buoys, satellites and the state of the chief-forecaster’s corns, there has always been room for error. But the forecast has improved.

Which is why when you see the animations give way to actual isobars, packed close, it elicits the sort of response in a viewer only normally observed when they see a picture of their house on telly with a reporter standing outside it in a flak vest - in front of a tank and dozens of coppers with the word ‘live’ in the bottom left hand corner of the screen and themselves peering through the window and looking back and forth in disbelief at their telly.

Certainly that was the case last night, when the North Norfolk Coast was on red alert. High tides, winds, low pressure systems and a vengeful god all combined to bring the danger of flooding. My immediate concern was ‘will the fish and chipper at Wells be affected?’.

Luckily, last night passed without major watery incident.

But it did mean that, for a while there, forecasts were the centre of attention. I think they are usually exciting anyway. The shipping forecast is pure poetry. Forecasts are important, not just to those who rely on the weather to make their living, fishermen and farmers, but as an island nation to those of us who still have a genetic link to the sailors and land labourers of the past.

Which is why I think that there should be a rusticated forecast. Away with measurement of sunshine hours, the pollen index and the atmospheric pressure. I want to hear that it’s going to be ‘bosky’ tomorrow, with ‘gloaming’ spells developing toward evening. Temperature range, who needs more than: bloody hot, hot, cold, brass monkeys and ‘christ, it’s cold’?