Britain is in drought, and my shoes squelch on the way to work

 ‘Sir,’ read a letter in the Daily Telegraph last week. ‘Is this the wettest drought since records began?’

High five, David Stevens of Poole, Dorset. I couldn’t have put it better myself. Drought? A lack of water? The sodding stuff is falling from the sky. All day, every day. Drought? Are you sodding kidding me?

OK, no more sodding  I shall try to restrain myself. But it’s not easy. You know me. I’m a rationalist. I pride myself on not being the sort of person who steps outside in December, shivers, and thinks ‘global warming must be a myth!’ Or, indeed, who basks in an unusually warm February and decides that it isn’t one.

I have visited the Met Office. I did not find them to be secret communists with an agenda to overthrow capitalism. They were just geeks with beards, who were really into weather. It was quite the eye-opener. Since then, when the meteorological consensus seems counterintuitive, I just shrug and think, ‘well, it’s probably more complicated than that’.