On birthdays, celebrations, and confirmation of how wet the country has become!

We seem to have had a week of birthdays. Well, not quite a week but very nearly and certainly an extended weekend of celebrations. Last Wednesday was our daughter’s birthday. Wednesday is not a good for working teacher to celebrate a birthday so we put it off until the weekend.  Saturday was an old friend’s birthday. We usually celebrate each other’s birthdays with lunch at the pub next door but Saturday was just too busy so we postponed that too. Today is Grandson Number One’s 19th birthday. 

So yesterday we put our daughter’s and Grandson Number One’s birthday together and had a joint celebration dinner at our house. They shared a cake, with one candle, which we lit twice and sang the Happy Birthday Song twice over, to the delight of he smallest members of the family. A good time was had by all. Today my old friend and I went out to celebrate her birthday over lunch. Things can quieten down again now.

Earlier this morning I ran round the village as usual. It didn’t rain on me! 

Over recent times I have had numerous conversations with friends and acquaintances and even complete strangers about how wet it has been recently, sometimes I have thought it may just be our perception but today I had confirmation in a report in the newspaper. 

“UK harvests of important crops could be down by nearly a fifth this year due to the unprecedented wet weather farmers have faced, increasing the likelihood that the prices of bread, beer and biscuits will rise.

Analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) has estimated that the amount of wheat, barley, oats and oilseed rape could drop by 4m tonnes this year, a reduction of 17.5% compared with 2023.

The warnings come as farmers have borne the brunt of the heavy rainfall and bad weather experienced over the winter, with the UK experiencing 11 named storms since September. In England, there was 1,695.9mm of rainfall between October 2022 and March 2024, the wettest 18-month period since records began in 1836.”

There you go. It’s not just my imagination. No doubt this will lead to another rise in the cost of living!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!