Around here we’ve had 180% of our annual rainfall already and it’s only mid-May. They’re actually opening dams to let the excess out.
What you should have had we did – really, storms that should have hit you went further south and then hung about over us instead.
Just thought you’d like to know that as your hosepipe bans are imminent….
For some reason we’ve been getting a lot of rain in Brisbane lately, too.
But I think the Weather God pays attention to your blog Tim. Today it actually hasn’t rained!!
We want our water back!
Very poor winter rainfall here – dams are only at 22% and summer hasn’t started yet…
I can see us tankering in water from Greece again.
On hearing first cuckoo
And seeing first swallow
Hosepipe ban
Is sure to follow.
Since finding out that households use less than 5% of UKs water consumption, I’ve had the nagging feeling that hosepipe bans are performance theatre.
@Ness
Of course they are. Originally intended as a “hair shirt” to encourage planners to permit more reservoirs, but that didn’t work, and nobody could possibly admit that they were wrong, could they? And the water saved by a hosepipe ban means they don’t have to spend so much fixing leaks, so that’s a win, too.
They absolutely are performance theatre – and since I bought a little battery operated pressure gun that works with the ‘hose’ end in a bucket of water (thus making it totally portable and reachable even further than a hosepipe) I no longer care whether they slap on one my area!
I resent people, well, public utilities, who sell me stuff be it electricity or water or gas at prices they set without the bother of competition and then tell me I must conserve my use of it. Tesco doesn’t tell me to go careful on the sausages. Amazon doesn’t ration chinese crap. Why can’t they do their job and provide me with stuff I pay for and which they meter?
Our governments have told us for decades not to be proud of being British. I wish they’d left it at that rather than spend a lot of time, effort and my money proving that we’re just the infants wandering around aimlessly in the big wide world, ignorant of facts and reality while the big boys push us around and take all our pocket money.
Tim, that’s what a big, fat blocking high NW of Scotland will do to us. It’s become a bit of a May/June feature over the past few years but this year’s started in March. And it diverts the jetstream, which brings the wet weather to you.
At least it ought to be a decent year for alvarinho and douro.
JuliaM,
That sounds pretty cool. Can you tell me what the product is?
They never think of people with swimming pools, callous bastards.
During the last hosepipe ban, I had to turn off the top skimmer as the water level dropped too low for it to operate.
Hosepipe ban = best summer for years/decades in these parts
From this article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0r1nk8g8l8o
“The average Scot is using 178 litres a day compared with 137 litres in England and Wales.”
What’s the reason for this? I can’t believe that crossing the border changes behaviour very much.
Western Bloke @ 9.27, it may be something like this:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/356784877154?_skw=jet+washer+cordless&itmmeta=01JV9PXNTCY78GT31HSEE6TR9Q&hash=item5312092e62%3Ag%3AhkgAAOSwW3Bn%7EyYJ&itmprp=enc%3AAQAKAAAA8FkggFvd1GGDu0w3yXCmi1cPaGCGTeZ9hfKguPdQNFW2PLW9WVRzomvoDxXbCgkbfiYyRfH8gp%2FNsZOE1d0GkzUfVAHtCoGEa8ybStYueEbKKqquj1Zy81IyGyKOgqFa0D3pE%2FtoD7lt7zRoKqPUnhU%2FglxJx4usdFc7YVyY%2BiWoaYpoNb0TEnix5YLmp%2Be9J7Atl9B5Ls7pqp29mKmB4YrQE4ZvQGWzBoMuvUM84iKswjfKS6oePkPyrTTzLV6%2BIAVH0%2FrjA0sEvFFRWNo7iP6L0yv24YxF6qwHggn3P6WCOeqIxaS%2FTLEEQTjRwktVAw%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR6jd9rbaZQ&keyword=jet+washer+cordless&sacat=0&relatedSearch=true
I have one – great for washing the bike, windows, conservatory, but also good for draining ponds and water features. It’s not as powerful as a ‘proper’ jet washer but as JuliaM says, you just need a bucket (it’ll drain a bucket pretty quick, but if you have a water butt…..).
@ BiA
I suspect that it’s because we get so many rainy days that the concept of having to restrict usage in any way seems bizarre.
Taps running when brushing teeth why not? its only water and the stuff is bloody everywhere.
WB, p.s, you can also hook it up to a hosepipe, or a 2 litre coke bottle for weedkilling…….
We just ignore hosepipe bans. Never had any grief.
I usually don’t leave comments, but the support we got from Ericks Webs Design was next level. Our traffic has doubled since launch.
“The average Scot is using 178 litres a day compared with 137 litres in England and Wales.”
If they’re talking about personal use by individuals, wonder what the amount is for Frogs, given their legendary soap dodging.
@WesternBloke
Sounds like the Ryobi tool. I bought one from Amazon. Very useful.
Only the government could run out of water in Scotland.
There seems to be an creeping increase in spam posters going on.
BiA: Ours ain’t metered.
Also what BiS says (I can’t recall a hosepipe ban round these parts since the early ’80s, if it was even as late as that), but honestly I’m sure it’s mostly because we think we aren’t paying for it. They don’t even itemize the rates any more since they switched to Council Tax, reorganized all the local authorities (again), and nationalized the People’s Soviet for Water and Sewerage.
By the way, should I change my handle to “Bloke in Glasgow” then, or what? This isn’t my real name (although it’s not unrelated) – I chose it to avoid being buttonholed by friends and family over stuff I’d said on t’internet – but I’ve been Sam for over twenty years.
They don’t have to spend so much fixing leaks”
What, like this one!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14711537/Burst-pipe-sends-send-thousands-gallons-water-towering.html
Talk of Jockoland and soap dodging reminds me of Paisley Panda, the mascot of St Mitten
A special mention ought also to be made of Paisley Panda’s spectacular hard work in baiting followers of Greenock Morton. The rivalry between the two clubs has always been fierce, with those from Greenock being stereotyped as stinking soap-dodgers on the social (with some good reason), and this provided the Panda with particular ammunition. Emerging in front of visiting Morton fans at St. Mirren’s Love Street home armed with a bar of soap and long-handled brush, Paisley Panda proceeded to “wash” – presumably to teach them how to do it themselves. On another of Morton’s visits, he even produced a giant pine tree air freshener which he placed in front of their supporters, almost sparking a brawl with Morton’s own mascot before the police intervened. No one-trick-pony, he also been known to dance in front of the visitors with a banjo whilst playing the theme from Deliverance, and join in with Morton’s warm-up to lend a disruptive hand.
@Otto
That wasn’t the Scottish football story I was expecting.
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/scottish/smelly-celtic-fan-leads-club-to-issue-letter-to-supporters-reminding-them-to-wash-10503409.html
This would probably be the wrong time to mention that the most common surname in Glasgow is Smellie. It’s pronounced “smiley”. Supposedly.
(Tecknick’ly, the most common surname is some variation in spelling of the pronunciation “smiley”. Which reflects rather better on the city, I think. But isn’t as funny.)
or this….
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0D12Q3XDV?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1
Sam
My opinion FWIW – you have an identity as Sam. Unless you don’t want that identity any more, stick with it.
If you want a new identity, unconnected with the Sam Duncan identity, then create one.
But I think a new pattern would be nice; there’s lots of us Blokes, but I was a tad ashamed not to have come up with something slightly more original. Perhaps summit sartorial, rather than geographic…
Heigh ho….
Around here we’ve had 180% of our annual rainfall already
Your average annual rainfall, Tim. Average. Or you’ll have the climate scare merchants around here.
We’ve had much more than our average. After two drought years. It was chucking down yesterday lunchtime as well. Last time I remember it this wet was back in 2012. Guadalfeo overflowed & swept an entire caravan site away. So after 10, or 20 years the rainfall will be… Average.
bloke in spain said:
“back in 2012. Guadalfeo overflowed & swept an entire caravan site away”
It’s a good start.
Around here we’ve had 180% of our annual rainfall already
Your average annual rainfall, Tim. Average.
Records don’t go back far enough to provide enough data to calculate an accurate average and standard deviation so we don’t even know in climate terms how meaningful 180% variation from this mean is in the long run. It could even be that this years rainfall is closer to the long term mean that the average they are using.
The Scot gov reports that metered water users in south great britain are more likely to report leaks, and do so more promptly. Something about incestives springs to mind
Wessex Water sent me one of these LeakBots FoC.
I had some work done on the lawn on 1 May expecting at least some rain and as we haven’t had any I had to get the sprinkler out every night for 5 nights and now every other night until tonight. The LeakBot has been going mad sending me alerts that I’ve got abnormal water usage.
As to monikers
I was Bloke No Longer in Austria
But after five years of no longer being there I thought it best to change.
When I initially started commenting, I used my own name but changed it to BNLiA to fit with all the other Blokes here.
@rhoda klapp – “Why can’t they do their job and provide me with stuff I pay for and which they meter?”
Because they’re not operating in a normal market. Due to political influence, they cannot increae prices so there is no way to match demand to supply.
@BiND
You can get a fair estimate of the average in a place like here by what plants have grown. It’s a marginal climate. Bit dryer some species do well, bit wetter different species.. You’d also get data from alluvial deposits etc Not far down the road we’ve even got our own desert. The one you see in the Clint Eastwood films.
I was going to use Bloke in North Wales but there was somebody already using that and I didn’t feel like being more specific.
Was playing Mortal Kombat at the time I came up with my name… No surprises where I got the idea. And yes, it was pretty much the first thing I saw. Translated to Russian because I wanted to, and was just starting to learn. (Not much better now. Languages don’t come easy to me. 🙁 )
I started as bloke in France, I think (correct me if I’m wrong, BiS) because I was an ordinary person living in France.
So my apologies.
“A bold bloke on a blonk” (blonk = horse) Piers Plowman, if I recall correctly.
Not bold, not a horseman.
I suspect I started the “bloke” thing. I certainly don’t remember any other “blokes” on Tim’s blog using the term. Must have been when I first came to Dagoland or I would have been another BiF. I like “bloke”because it’s very down to earth Brit & “geezer”would have been too London. I’ve a feeling I originally commented here as Perdu en France because that seemed to be my default state at the time. Although it could equally have been Bloke Between the Golden Arches, since McD’s was the only place to get the interweb when on the move in those days. Pre affordable SIM data plans. I think in France it was something like 100mB/month/70€ contract.
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