It is terrible weather today: the rain is pouring from the sky as though all the angels of Heaven were weeping buckets; the wind is howling round the house for all the world like the ghosts of the long dead souls who once lived here. Yet despite this, happiness reigns supreme. To walk through sheets of rain, driven by the wind into the very nooks and folds of your being brings a sense of being alive akin to little else. Having returned home, and now sitting in the warmth of my room, a short homage to the rain and sun of yesteryear strains to be written.

The UK has an obsession with the weather. Along with fish and chips, tea and football, that is one of the biggest cliches about our country. As with so many cliches, however, there is a grain of truth hiding amongst the mythology: in a country where the weather is quite capable of changing from blinding sun to pouring rain, hail and snow in the space of an hour or less, it is hardly surprising that the subject frequently makes an appearance in conversation.