Natalie Downe

I know being British it may be considered stereotypical to talk about the weather… but I’m going to anyway. The winds were so atrocious today that their effect on our ‘Great’ British train service meant that I had to miss Pub Standards! I was really looking forward to going too, but with the prospect of taking a bus between Oxford and Didcot, possible disruption at Reading and with a lot of the tube services suspended; I decided it probably wasn’t wise to travel tonight. The train people told me no to. I would have gotten there quite late and had to leave early for a hellish journey home.

Can’t complain though, there were many people in much worse a situation than just having to miss a social. It would normally be quite amazing to see that the main story on the news is about the weather today, but it is getting unfortunately more frequent that the unusual local weather in the UK is top news. Today, last I heard, nine people died because of the weather, two tragically from falling walls.

Round our neck of the woods it is quite rural so we suffer quite a bit at the hands of the elements. Today we had 4 blackouts because of the wind and last week the river Evenlode burst its banks and flooded the nearby fields.

So, allthough we Brits may talk a lot about the weather, we have reason to.