When is a Drought Not a Drought?

That is the question that is exercising my mind at this moment: When is a drought NOT a drought? And the answer? When it's been raining nearly every day for three weeks! At least it's not what we normally understand by the term 'drought'.

Rainy drought conditions!

You see, my friends, ever since the "drought" was made official and a water hosepipe ban was put in place, as well as other restrictions on the use of water, heaven's sluice-gates have opened up and it has rained on us almost every day to some degree or other, which is just as well, really, as our gardens get watered at least during this extreme spell of dry weather!

And believe me, there's nothing worse than a wet drought! A dry drought I know how to deal with, but a wet drought... now that's a different thing altogether and the "rule-book" says nothing about that. How does one begin to tackle a wet drought? The Authorities tell you one thing and your senses witness another. Is the weather just being bloody-minded to wrong-foot meteorologists and hoodwink the rest of us or are we seeing contradiction where there is none?

As rainy conditions stop us from going into the garden to deal with the drought by chucking a few buckets of water over our more precious plants, we see all the vegetation really taking off with all this dry rain falling on us and before we know it we have a jungle to cut down!. What are we to do? Brave the rain to counter the drought or weather the drought and let the rain do its worst? Either way, we're damned if we do and damned if we don't! 

Could this be the future?

And to make matters worse, my confounded brolly gave up the ghost the other day before a sudden powerful gust when I was out and I was left helpless before a possible imminent downpour of drought-induced rain. Fortunately the drought held off till I was back home before unleashing its stores of rain. Now I'm brolly-less and can't find a shop that sells them. Cue to go online at Amazon and get one from there together with a pair of garden secateurs and perhaps a revamped mackintosh and some sort of cat repeller to stop cats pooping in my garden every day!



09.05.2012
It is three days later and the drought continues with more rain every day. Wet boggy ground and mud patches in gardens and parks are visual testimony to the cumulative effects of a watery drought. The hosepipe has become irrelevant as Nature is being kind to us and supplying in abundance what we may not obtain from the water companies. But the special drought restrictions continue and there's no sign yet of their ending. With dry weather like this, umbrella sellers will be doing a rip-roaring trade.

Should a period of real dry weather, not to say drought, come upon us one day soon, we'll need a new word to define it, given that drought now conjures up visions of constant wet and rainy weather! The only viable terms that come to mind at the moment are 'real-drought' or, 'drought-for-real' or better still 'dry-drought'. Yes, the last of these has a certain pleasant alliterative ring to it. We will have 'droughts' that are wet and then 'dry-droughts' that are true periods of dry weather. Bingo! Problem solved! And the English language is the richer for it.

I rest my case and spare the reader's patience.