London: They're not lying about the weather.

Today I am complaining about a subject dear to any English-person's heart: the weather. (Do people complains about the weather in places where the weather doesn't really change? What else do they talk about to fill in the gaps in conversation? Or are they just better conversationalists all round? I feel there is an academic paper somewhere in there.)

I was woken yesterday morning by the dawn chorus, which is quite nice at around eight a.m. on a Saturday morning. But not at four a.m. Yes, it is now light at around four in the morning (I may be slightly off here - I groaned and squinted at my watch, and the hour number was a four. I can't remember what the other numbers were).

I associate long days with warm weather, somewhat understandably I think. This does not seem to be the case in London, where we had a few very nice days some time last month when the days were nowhere near as long, but we're now back to wearing coats. Of course, last weekend was a bank holiday weekend (I spent a few days relaxing in Ipswich, which was very nice) so that may have affected the weather. It can't be sunny on a bank holiday.

We're supposed to be conserving water, too, because the last two years have been the driest since the seventies. That didn't stop April from being the wettest April on record. I did kind of enjoy the change from eternally-overcast days, though. New Zealand weather seems to be more extreme than London weather, so I relished splashing through the flood puddles (ah, home!), but where is the extreme sun to go with the extreme rain?

Take that as a challenge, weather.