If we have knocked the weather off its axis, we can't say what it will settle down to as the new normal.
But while a lot of people in other parts of the World are suffering from record heat waves, in Britain we've had the coldest, wettest July for . . . I don't know full facts but many, many years. Apparently, there's different ways of looking at the records, how the data was collected in the past and that sort of thing.
One summer which sticks out for me as really poor was 2004. Went sorta, kinda like into business with an acquaintance who had a small m/c business. He used to have a bike for sale in the shop, said he could make a good return on selling bikes, provided he bought at the right price, but could only finance one bike - had to sell that before he could buy another. We looked at ways to leverage up a little bit more cash so he could have two or three bikes on offer.
But that summer, it seemed to rain every bloody weekend. Atlantic wet fronts coming though one after another. Not a good year for a venture capitalist in the m/c sector. To quote one dealer we wuz talking to about the state of trade, 'With this weather, the bloody bikes are just nailed to the floor, mate!'
