It was raining cats and dogs in London this week, with thunder crashing around Wimbledon and great forks of lightening slashing through the black clouds. That is when the sun wasn't beaming out of a flawlessly blue sky.
One day I was sweltering on the Tube, cursing the fact that I hadn't brought a bottle of water with me, while the next I was hiding from a cloudburst in a shop doorway, much to the irritation of the owner.
Changeable weather I think you'd call it.
And of course I blamed the weather forecasters for not warning me about it. (They had of course, I just hadn't listened, or rather understood what I was being told.)
In the UK we always seem to be blaming the weather and its messengers, while making more and more demands of the forecasts.
"Please tell us exactly when it will rain at the Test match", is one such query the BBC's weather team received recently.
Mind you some listeners are baffled by forecasts that include phrases like these:-
"Showers will squeak up",
"We'll have a weatherfront sitting down", and
"We are going to have a sandwich of weather today."
For this week I went to the BBC's weather centre, which is not located on some blasted heath or exposed coastline, but occupies a small space in the now doomed Television Centre in west London.
Apparently the weather team will be some of the last people to leave that famous doughnut when it closes in the next year or so.
I walked along the corridor past the gleaming photos of the predominantly young forecasters, dreaming of the long lost days of Bert Foord and Michael Fish, to meet the people who really know what pressure is, not least when they have to cut a bulletin in half with virtually no warning because a Today interview has over run.
I talked first to one of the Weather Centre's clients, the managing editor of Radio 4, Denis Nowlan.
Roger Bolton presents on BBC Radio 4
- Listen again to this week's , produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with , find out how to the listener or subscribe to the podcast on the web page.
- Read all of Roger's blog posts.
- is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4.
- The picture shows Jack Armstrong, one of the team of weathermen from the Meterological office in 1963.
