It has been raining for three weeks solid here in Brussels. We shouldn't complain, we had an unbearable heatwave in June which some countries are still suffering in August, but we do of course. BBC's Chris Packham brought us back to Earth (see what I did there) by reminding us that 252 million years ago it rained for two million years. Thankfully humans hadn't yet been invented, or else we'd have webbed feet and gills now. Two million years! Like in Blade Runner. I would venture that this might have
The present deluges all over the world are throwing up photos of clouds, which took me back to the annual school journey at primary school where we would be marched out on "field trips" to study aspects of the natural world.
Manchester and Liverpool sent their kids to North Wales on subsidized holidays. South London had the Isle of Wight. These all-expenses paid jaunts were for kids whose parents weren't wealthy enough to take them on a family holiday. Foreign holidays were almost unheard of, at least in our demographic. The ILEA as it was, Inner London Education Authority (1965-90), was a fine socialist organisation that provided grants for holidays and, later, for language stays abroad, of which I was the lucky recipient of