It would appear that Thames Water and the authorities in general have caught onto the simple fact that this year does not count as drought. A little chart from Diamond Geezer illustrates the problem quite succinctly.

• March:
• April:
• May:
• June:
• July:

If I could be arsed, I’d also overlay those calendars with another set – ones that show weekends that I was here and able to do anything. If I had such an overlay, I’d be able to show a nice, simple fact: I’ve not had a day at home where it was dry all day since the middle of May. Meaning that the lawn didn’t get cut between May and last weekend.

Funnily enough, the mixture of heat and water did our lawn no end of good, if by good you mean “encouraging uncontrolled growth”. By the time I got time and weather to do it, it was eighteen inches tall. Too tall for our piddling electric lawnmower, and too thick for our piddling electric strimmer.

So I ended up doing something bloody annoying: cutting the damn lawn with shears. On a boiling hot day. And constantly finding little surprises that Roxy had left in the tufts of grass, which were particularly foul smelling.

I think that it may be time to invest in either a concrete back yard, or a decent lawnmower. Or invisible option (c) – a flamethrower…