British weather is responsible for more conversations than hot dinners. Poems have been inspired by it. Well, I haven't exactly been that inspired over the last two days, now that our early spring sunshine has gone.

Two days ago the rot set in. There was a cold wind and the sky was claggy, humid, almost misty, and the sun was losing it's battle to burn this murk away. It was a quiet, reflective day. I wandered around Lawns (a park that was once the grounds of the local manor house) and people were fishing, walking their dogs, or just sitting there meditating. Kind of an odd day. Only Milo, a dog that adopted me as a friend just lately much to the chagrin of it's ever-patient owner, showed any energy.

Yesterday we had the storm. It's rare for just cloudbursts to arrive over Swindon at this time of year, normally you'd expect more drizzly rainfall. I looked up from my computer screen as the sky went dark, a sure sign of heavy cloud. I looked out the back of the house and a slate gray fog hung over Swindon whilst sunshine was visible to the south, almost obscured by the buildings further up the hill. The rain came down in heavy torrential droplets. A small river flowed down the gravel alleyway that runs beside the car park. Secure in my warm and dry premises, I watched the rainfall and not suprisingly, noticed the sudden lack of activity on Swindon streets.

Today is the more typical dreary wet weather that we Brits love to ignore. Even when the drizzle subsides, people still walk quickly from place to place with umbrellas. Experience in British weather soon teaches you that it can change from one extreme to another. Rain? Don't talk to me about rain...

Reminisence of the Week

Some years ago, I turned up to the airfield hoping to get a flight in before the expected bad weather reached England. The day was lovely and sunny. Clumps of towering cumulus hung in the sky here and there, but it was definitely flyable. The weather report in the control tower suggested that the incoming front was a bad one, low cloud and heavy rain. I decided not to fly far from the field, just get another hour in the logbook and enjoy what sunshine there was.

The little Cessna 150 isn't exactly an inspiring aeroplane to fly, but it was cheap to rent, so off I took, the aeroplane lifting eagerly into the sky like it always did. There wasn't much turbulence either, and I flew here and there northeast of the field as the sun warmed the cockpit. I did, howebver, keep a careful eye on the distant wall of cloud. A baleful white and grey herald of bad things. It was obviously getting closer, and I decided it was time to fly home and land in safety.

Arriving at the airfield and joining the circuit overhead, it was clearly none too soon to bring the aeroplane home. The weather was very close now. I could see the rain under the encroaching clouds, thick blurry shafts of it looking strangely like teeth. I flew round the circuit and it was obvious the cloud was moving faster than I 'd reckoned on. It dawned on me I'd done something dumb. I hadn't planned for diverting elsewhere, and that meant my landing was going to have to be a good one. In theory, I should have called over the radio and got myself vectored to another field. In reality, I thought I had enough time to land before the rain closed in.

It was on the final approach I saw that the runway was being swallowed up. The airfield was vanishing before my eyes. There was no way I was going to 'go around' into that! So, I made a decision to press on, to make that landing. I actually thought I still had time to slip in.

Over the boundary of the field, something like ten feet above the tarmac, my world dissappeared into a light grey void. The rain came down onto the little Cessna like nothing else. For one moment there I thought I'd blown it. Caldrail, this is where you don't walk away...

Then something peculiar happened. Although the world was nothing but a solid grey nothingness, the tarmac ahead of me was visible as a dark trapezoid. I was flying in a monochrome world, alone, just above this dark shape that was the only object outside my little aeroplane. It was, in actual fact, a perfect visual guide to land by. I touched down lightly - by strange irony it was one of my smoother landings - and I wondered how wet I was going to get after I found the parking area.

Not even slightly. Seconds after touching down the Cessna rolled out of the rain into bright sunshine the other side of the squall. The expected bad weather was still distant, way ahead of me. I parked the aeroplane and made my way back to the club, aware of those air traffic controllers glaring at me from inside the tower at that idiot who'd nearly killed himself. Caldrail, this is what you don't get away with...