I was half-keeping an eye on the cricket on Monday. I noticed that England’s attempts to save the game were being helped by the weather and it took me back to the days of childhood. You remember that don’t you – when the summer holidays were a six-week feast of glorious weather and hosepipe bans?  But amongst all that sunshine there must have been a few downpours because the other thing I can remember from days gone by is the England cricket team being saved by the weather on a good few occasions.

Thinking about that made me also think that the weather in general this year has been a bit of a nostalgia-fest. Everything else t might seem like the eighties revisited, with unemployment, riots and royal happenings, but the weather has taken its cue from  the previous decade. We’re shivering and sweltering in the seventies revisited.

We had a couple of decent snowfalls at the start of the year, like we did back then. The difference is that then we coped with it rather than giving up (see Moans About the Weather, www.thebirminghampress.com , every January) but that’s a side issue. Then it rained in Spring. A lot. Finally we had a blisteringly hot July and an August where there’s been warm weather, showers, torrential downpours and probably snow somewhere. In short, proper British weather throughout 2013. It’s comforting and you can carry a bagful of spare clothes with you because you don’t know whether you’re in most danger of hypothermia, sunstroke or drowning. You can even while away the hours waiting for the bus by talking about the weather, just like we used to.

Back then the big fear was that we were headed towards a new Ice Age. Now it’s climate change. Maybe global warming (as in Whatever Happened To…?) met the incumbent glaciers head on and this is what we’re left with. In years to come a generation currently at school will reminisce about throwing snowballs all winter and then the glorious heatwave of 2013. Enjoy it while it lasts, because the Sun told us, just days before the July heatwave began, that we’re in for a decade of bad summers.