I recall that last May, the weather was hot and sunny a lot of the time; it seemed like summer, although it’s really only late spring.  Then it chucked it down in the period we in Britain traditionally associate with summer.

This year, we’ve had our April showers and now we’re into May and the sun is blazing away up there in the sky, seeming like summer again.  Presumably that’s because there’s less ozone to protect us from the rays now.  Hmm, no-one ever goes on about the hole in the ozone layer anymore.  It’s all greenhouse gases this and carbon footprint that.  I still say we should plug the cows into the gas mains…

Anyway, from the evidence of two consecutive years, I hypothesise that summer has moved to May.  I also suggest that winter has moved as well, given that 20–30 years ago, we got snow in December, but now we get it in January, if any; spring must be reduced to March and April.  If we get all that rain again that we had last year, then I propose we have a new rainy season in June to August, followed by autumn.

I’m dreaming of a white Easter…

Just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it? Still, that’s what we woke up to this morning. Snow, on Easter Sunday. I know Easter’s early this year, but it’s still not supposed to snow at Easter. It’s supposed to snow at Christmas, but it didn’t.

So, I spent Easter morning having a snowball fight, which I lost on hits because my throwing is dreadful, but won on stamina (because I had a sneaky method of keeping my hands warm and dry and my opponent, the Hubster, had bare hands) and building a snowman.

Seems to be having a right old weather today. It was blowing a gale this morning, flinging rain against the window so hard, it sounded like it was hailstoning. But it wasn’t. I looked. That was around 7 or 8. Now—nearly time for elevenses—it’s less windy, not rainy and really quite cloudy. But no so cloudy that the sun can’t peek through now and again.

Normally, when the Hubster leaves for work in the morning, I’m still in bed snuggled up with the cat. She likes that, but this morning, it was different.

This morning, I got up at 7 to make the Hubster his breakfast - a posh bacon butty - because he was to run in the Cambridge Fun Run round the Science Park later, and the website says to make sure you have your breakfast that day. So I made sure he had his breakfast.

The cat noticed I was not in position, and was most disgruntled by this. She decided the way to sort it out would be to run round the house like a loon, going, “maaow” occasionally. After the Hubster had finished eating, I went upstairs to see to the cat. She was at the far side of her double bed in her bedroom, and came straight over to me when I went in the room, and purred a lot. Then, she jumped onto the floor and led me to my bedroom door, where she waited to make sure I was following, then she went round the other side of the bed, which is where she tends to jump up from for some strange furry reason, and I got on the bed and looked down at her and she immediately jumped up and implied she’d like me to get into bed again so she could snuggle up. I complied, and she snuggled. We stayed there for really quite some time.

Later, I noticed that the fun run was due to start soon, so I got ready quickly and cycled up to the Science Park, which smells a bit chemically these days, to watch. I was just behind the start line when they started, so I kind of saw the start. After loitering to see if I could see the Hubster in the throng of people outside Cambridge Consultants, where the start line is (I couldn’t), I went up to Accelrys, where there were a few spectators, some of who I know, lurking for moral support.

Accelrys were putting out two relay teams, one all boys, and one mixed (three girls and one boy). Becky was running in the mixed team, and the Hubster was propping up the rear of the boys’ team. Also in the Hubster’s team (028) were Kevin, James and Paul “Psycho” Sykes. Also in Becky’s team (029) were Toby, Elizabeth and Monica, all shown below, after the race was finished and they’d all got their breath back.

The weather was good for the event - fine, dry and sunny, with no wind or rain or anything. It wasn’t even that cold, as you might expect for the middle of November in England.

Hopefully, all the runners have made lots of money for charidee.

It’s tailing off now, but there’s just been a bit of a storm, with thunder, lightning, loads of rain and even a few hailstones!

My husband’s out in that. Running.

“Are you going to Strawberry Fair?” I sang tunelessly to The Hubster yesterday.

“If I must,” he grumped, “but they don’t sell strawberries.”

When we got there, around 11.30 a.m. via a trip to Tesco for Irn Bru for The Hubster and Jamaican Ginger Beer, which appears to come in handy small bottles now, for so fewer pennies than other pop, the first thing we noticed when we got onto the common proper were loads and loads of food stalls. As we meandered, they became more interspersed with clothes stalls selling your usual tie-dye, hippy, grungy-type stuff. There was also jewellery, which was also of the same style, which was perfect because I finally managed to successfully replace my earrings, one of which I lost whilst on honeymoon. I tried to get some from the normal Cambridge Market, but, although I did buy three pairs, none were the right ones. I’ve worn the same style for over ten years now.

We decided upon goat curry to eat for dinner (aka lunch) from one of the Caribbean stalls. Very tasty, it was, although there was far too much food for my tiny tum. (I’m serious - it’s like a reverse TARDIS in there.) We also found a bed-spread stall, which was good because I wanted a new one for the bed-sofa in the living room. We got a black one with some sort of crazy psychedelic mushroom and snakes (but no badgers) and another one which is tie-dyed blue and has elephants on it. Maybe snakes as well.

We went to the beer tent, which had some interesting-looking bitters, but it was far too hot for bitter, so we had lager instead. (Lager-drinkers!) The other end of the beer tent was being called the acoustic tent, where we listened to the tail end of of a song at the tail end of an act. We wandered off when they’d finished to sit on the grass near what appeared to be the main stage to drink our beer.

A bit more wandering brought us to the lost kids tent; we weren’t sure if the lost kids went in the tent or in the nearby cage with a boingy floor, which some may have called mini trampolines.

I saw a sign on the grass advertising strawberries and cream, which I couldn’t resist pointing out to The Hubsicle:

“See,” I said pointing to the strawberries and cream sign,” you can get strawberries.”

“Hmph,” he said, and I didn’t dare ask if we could get some!

Around 2.30, The Hubster’s whinging became unbearable, so we headed home, via the Old Spring, for refreshments because it was really very hot, and some of us were getting sunburnt. As ever.

There was rain forecast for today. There were clear blue skies and sunshine this morning. The rain is happening now. Most murky-dismal, so it is. I’m glad I went out this morning, instead of putting it off till this afternoon!