Happy Jubilee Weekend - and welcome to the new British Flag, the Big Purple Wrinklie!

You know that song 'Dancing in the Street'?    The one that goes 'summer's here, and the time is right for dancing in the street'?  That one?  Well, yes indeed, summer is here, and time is, indeed, right for dancing in the street, if one is a) a frogman, b) a masochist or c) a duck.

This is how we know it is a Bank Holiday.  Morning goes like this - wake up stupidly early to the sound of chickens.  It's like the dawn chorus only slightly less musical and with more 'waaaahhhhWAHWAHwahhh' (which is the sound chickens make when they are shut in their run in the pouring rain and want to go out into the garden, presumably in the belief that it's not as wet if you're not surrounded by wire).

The hen known as 'Big Ginge' in happier times, ie, when the sun was shining

Let chickens out of run.  Realise that it is raining.  Go back to bed in the slight, and pathetic, hope that because it is so early (like, really really early, even the dawn chorus is just brushing off its music) the rain will have stopped by breakfast time.  Lie in bed listening to sound of downpour.  Realise that you are riding horses later in the day and wonder where you have put your waterproof pants - the ones that keep water out, not in.

Wake again later, to sounds of chickens mugging one another.  It is still raining.  Damp bunting flops against the window like washing that's been on the line for six months and has welded to the pegs and you realise that this is Jubilee Weekend.  That four day weekend that everyone has been looking forward to since the Coronation.  And it's raining.

Let's just run through it again, shall we?  For those readers who live in places where the weather follows fairly normal lines, who, therefore, might not be able to get to grips with this.  It is June.  It is so cold that I had the electric blanket on last night, went out in a long-sleeved top and a fleece and was still cold.  It is raining so hard that the chickens look like soggy mop-heads and are hiding under the hedge.  We should be sitting out in the garden with a Pimms or seven, deckchairs and suncream.  Instead, we are sitting indoors with hot tea, blankets and Vick's Vapor Rub, resigning ourselves to moist Jubilee Celebrations and the red white and blue of home-painted flags are running into one another until it looks as though our national flag is a big blob of purple on a wrinkled background.

Actually, that's not a bad idea.  Let's do away with the Union flag, on account of the fact that every time it's going to be flown (national celebration, Queen visiting, etc) it will be raining, and go for the more all-purpose 'Big Purple Wrinklie'.

It probably won't look as good as this when it's flopping from a flagpole, though.

So, let us go forth and celebrate the Jubilee in the hope that the weather improves and we will not have to sit in damp fields eating moist sandwiches and playing 'identify the insect that is burrowing into my leg', coming home with trench foot and four new kinds of scabies.  Let us hope the sun comes out, that our Purple Wrinklies dry out and fly proud and that the Pimms is undiluted!

Happy Diamond Jubilee, everyone!

Now, where are my waterproof pants?