London Eye
We have Laura’s French friend Anne staying with us at present, which gave us a chance to do the “tourist thing” in London yesterday. Luckily, the weather continues to oblige and we had a great day. Madame Tussauds, lunch at Chez Gerard’s in Covent Garden and then a walk through the wonderfully reborn South Bank for a trip on the Eye. I love London in the summer.
Peter
What do you know? Some more decent weather. Went for a very enjoyable walk around the lake at Dinton Pastures. The boys particularly like some of the trees you can climb en route. As you can see.
Felixstowe Beach
Last weekend we were lucky enough to be visiting our friends in Felixstowe. They live within a short stroll of the beach and on this occasion, the weather was (just about) good enough to have an enjoyable couple of hours sunning ourselves on the beach. We even braved swimming in the (rather bracing) sea.
It got me thinking about the great British summer, which seems to me to be not what it used to be. The last few summers feel like they have been a bit of a disaster. So I decided to compare the weather stats for the last 5 summers (May-Sept), with the ‘good old days’ (from age 8 to 21). A bit of googling and I had the stats and the figures for average rainfall confirmed everything: average rainfall has gone up 9%. Ha! I knew it.
But hang on a minute. Look at the stats for average hours of sunshine and you get a different story. Sunshine hours have gone up by 10%! Can it be that the good old days were not so wonderful as we remember them?
So whether global warming is to blame of not, the only conclusion I can come to is that there is a lot more weather than there used to be…
Chao
Our youngest, Peter, created this masterpiece from banana leaf, freshly shredded by hand during a meal to celebrate my parents’ Golden Wedding Anniversary. Cool.
Lewis
Had a fantastic, if rather damp, day today at Silverstone, watching Lewis Hamilton win the British Grand Prix. Here’s a shot I took of Lewis leading the race, which he did for pretty much the whole time. The long queues, the mud, the cold and the rain were worth it to see such a historic moment.
Nadal
Back at Wimbledon this week, courtesy of BA’s ad agency, BBH. Saw the “big 2” in action, Federer and Nadal. Both trounced their opponents rather comprehensively. Very impressive. Looking forward to what should be a great final, although we won’t be able to watch it live since we’ll be at the British Grand Prix (not another corporate hospitality junket, we’re paying for ourselves!).
Sadly, Nadal’s victim was Britain’s last remaining hope. Actually, now he’s lost, I think we should refer to him as “Scotland’s Andy Murray”.