So perhaps we might give it a rest as our present weather seems to stay the same every day. Hours of unbroken sunshine every day has been the recent norm. Recent Norm sounds not unlike a nickname that you get on an early American TV Sitcom. He’d have had a catchphrase that would be adopted by the public, or at least that public that watched TV, which unlike these days was a large percentage. Remember “What do you think of it so far?” the answer: “Rubbish!”. A catch phrase that only people of a certain age would understand these days and comes from the Morecambe and Wise Shows of the 70s. It’s a phrase that generally I have fond memories of, others seem these days so contrived as to be an embarrassment, like “Nice to see you, to see you…nice” ( Bruce Forsyth ) I shudder. He shouldn’t. There you go, I’m in catchphrase mode.

So one advantage of the sunny days, well there are many, but it does seem to give people a slightly sunnier disposition. Check out operatives, who I frequently speak to ( in my view this should be a duty, and a condition of sale) seem to me a tad more cheerful. I avoid the ones who I know don’t seem to want to speak. Some years ago I occasionally shopped at an upmarket store in town, where I believe the check out people are posher than most of the customers. Buying some lemons one day there the check out lady who looked like a local candidate for the chair of the local Conservative Sewing Group, examined them and asked me in her cut glass accent “Oh ! Are you planning to make a lemon posset? “ I replied that I had no idea what a posset was but would look it up. You don’t get that sort of question in Asda, but then in Asda you don’t pay the astronomical prices.I don’t shop at the posh store any more, we fell out over Covid, long story, too depressing.

I’ve been to California several times, first in the 70s when my agent thought we could get work in the USA market, as if they didn’t have enough cartoonists in America, and we went on what might be described as a ‘junket’ ‘these days. He hired an apartment for us in Venice Beach with another illustrator Phil Dobson a man who spoke with the flat tones of his native of Derby. Incidentally Phil was and still is a brilliant illustrator and is still at it, and I called myself an illustrator in those days as they seemed to be better paid than cartoonists.

We were there for two weeks in winter and it not only rained but was cold for those entire two weeks. The Queen was visiting the State at the same time and local papers said she’d ‘brought English weather with her’. More recent visits, this time to family who have gone there to live, have been weeks of unbroken sunshine. A bit like we are having here. One particular trip was at Christmas time and on Christmas Day, I went for a solitary walk around the area to justify a huge Christmas dinner. They lived then not far from Korea Town and I took loads of photographs of some superb typical American street signs with incandescent blue skies in the background on deserted streets. They are some of my favourite photos, together with those of the grandchildren of course. I don’t think they take much interest in the weather there, it being mostly sunny on most days. My first trip with Phil made the news as it was so unusual, but we felt quite at home. The trip was not quite what the agent promised, we got no work from it and I suspect now it was his way of having a tax deductible holiday.

So here we are at the start of what promises to be another sunny week, we’ll be growing lemons next, no need to go posh shopping for the vital ingredients to a posset.

White road on the Ridgeway, Wiltshire. Taken on a walk with my old college friend Peter Green the other day, and yes we were wilting.