British Summertime is grounded for bad behaviour.

Moments ago I overheard its mother talking to members of the British Met office who were pleading with her 'sun' to be let out. She said, "I'm afraid he won't be going anywhere for a while, I caught him stealing penny sweets from Patel's multi-mart back in May and when I confronted him he just told me a pack of bare-faced lies"

She went on to say, "It may seem a little harsh but I initially allowed him out for a couple of weekends in June but Springtime's mother had to drag him round to our house by the scruff of his neck - apparently he'd been bullying springtime and had threatened to 'bog-wash' him unless he gave over his dinner money"

The latest news is that summertime is refusing to eat his greens and can be heard stomping around his room screaming, "It's not fair, I hate you, I hate you, I hope you die" before bursting into tears and burying his head into his bean-bag.

In the meantime, summertime's place is being admirably covered by his short-tennis partner, Overcastwankweather.

It's the middle of August, traditionally the heart of summer and the warmest month in the calendar, even in Britain. So what kind of weather did we get yesterday? Did we get hours and hours of glorious, unbroken sunshine? Did we get hordes of sunbathers flocking to British parks and beaches? Were there fields of golden corn waving majestically in a gentle summer breeze?

Was there buggery! Instead we had: snow. Yes that's right... snow! A foot of the stuff fell on the northeast coast yesterday. And just to make sure that everyone knew the weather wasn't happy, there was flooding in north Wales, and a tornado off the Humber coast. This isn't Oklahoma or Arkansas, this is Britain... we don't do tornadoes.

*sigh* ... maybe we'll have a freak heatwave during Christmas, but I doubt it somehow.

The Meteorological Office says strictly speaking it wasn't snow, but re-frozen hail. The people who saw it said it was white, fluffy and melted into water. That's snow if you ask me.