It's all relative

While in Bangladesh recently, there were a couple of what we'd call torrential downpours one day. Each lasted just under an hour. This was in the middle of the dry season so I expected some mention in the following day's newspapers. Sure enough...

"Yesterday, there were outbreaks of brief light drizzle in the city."

In a country which gets monsoons, where the rain takes about a second to shred your umbrella and then makes your unprotected skin feel as though it's being peppered with marbles, I suppose one of our heavy rainstorms would count as light drizzle.

Snow joke!

A few centimetres of snow and London grinds to a halt. It wasn't even unexpected. Time was our local authorities would have had the roads cleared - trunk routes, bus routes and even suburban side roads - in time for people to set off for work.

In 1947, when there was just too much snow, buses ran with their wheels level with the tops of hedges, travelling on several feet of hard-packed snow on country routes. Trains got through, people went to work ; such a contrast with today's feeble efforts.