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’. But now? I’m struggling. Britain is in drought, and yet my shoes squelch on the way into work. And I’m not having it.

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I’m prepared to accept that the south-east has been unusually dry for the past two years. It hasn’t felt like that, not since I bought a barbecue, but seeing as I’m not one of those people that Delingpole interviews for controversial cover stories, I don’t regard anecdotage as evidence. I entirely accept that there’s a lot less water around than usual. But what we have is still… hmmm, how to put this? Quite a lot of water.

It’s making me an angry person. According to an article I read in the Guardian, this drought exposes us to the risk of flooding.