Surviving The Credit Crunch (2)

Anyone who has ever suffered the ignominy of having a cheque returned by the bank due to there being ‘insufficient funds’ will (perhaps) identify with the financial pressures that have caused me to radically revisit the way I spend money.

In the current economic climate, the recipient of such a returned cheque might be forgiven for thinking that the absence of money was more the fault of the bank running out of dosh than the account holder.

It’s a brave man who tells Bill Blunt to ignore the sirens. I think I know when it’s time to tighten my belt, just like everyone else. I’ve taken a long, hard look at how my money drips away. And, apart from the drink and the fags, it seems that quite a lot of my hard-earned lucre goes on … shampoo.

That’s right. I’m not so proud that I won’t admit to spending a fair wadge of cash each month on both keeping my hair in good trim, and washing it. So began my little experiment.

I decided to forgo my monthly trip to Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow – one of the classiest hair stylists on the Wirral – in favour of a five quid snip from Sharon at Ken’s Kuttery, just down the road. Somewhat surprisingly, I haven’t noticed a great deal of difference in the state of my locks. And, I am pleased to say, neither have any of the ladies who have recently dated me courtesy of GuardianSoulmates.

Still, I couldn’t help feeling that even more economies were to be made. It came to me when I considered the utility of shampoo. A Proustian moment in the shower, when I was transported back to my youth, was enough to convince me.

I don’t know exactly how many of my readers are under the age of (shall we say) 40… but anyone older might recall that, when they were children, they regularly had their hair washed with soap. That’s right. A bar of soap brushed across your head was once the closest you'd get to a clean head of hair. So, in an attempt to re-create those childhood days, I treated my mane to a jolly good lathering of soap.

My readers will be pleased to learn that the end result was a head of hair that was thicker, more manageable and, well … generally much better than anything out of a bottle.

Give it a try. You’ll thank me for it. But not before you've sold your shares in Alberto Johnson.

This article first appeared in the Cirencenster Bugle.

Surviving The Credit Crunch

As I quantitatively-eased myself out of bed this morning, ready to face the day with a spot of early worm-catching, I couldn’t help but reflect on how my fortunes have changed over the past year.

While the Government prepares to inject £75 billion into the banking sector in a desperate attempt to get them to lend money again, I began to think it was time to withdraw my hard-earned dosh from the grip of the thieving banksters and slip it under the mattress. In fact, I’m seriously considering setting up my own, on-line bank – underthemattress.com. I have it in mind to offer investors a seriously good rate of 10% interest a year for five years, so long as they promise to leave their money untouched for a decade. I’m not making any promises about the capital, however, as I’ll be warning anyone who takes a punt (via some suitable small print) that this may be at risk. Sounds fair to me. So, don’t waste your money on pointless consumer purchasers. Send it to me, and I will waste it for you.

Meanwhile, I’m re-organising my assets in the expectation that I might make a jump into property later this year. One thing’s for certain, however: I’ll be by-passing the traditional route of Estate Agents, as my experience of them over a lifetime has not exactly filled me with glee.

Last year, I dated a woman who worked in an estate agency. It didn't last long. Whenever I took her out for a meal she would complain I should be spending more on her. She also seemed to think she got more beautiful with every passing day, and constantly reminded me about the long list of other blokes who were interested in her - some of whom had already viewed and were in a far better position to proceed than I was.

I called it a day when she tried to persuade me to invest in 'some improvements' she wanted to make to her 'bay window', which she thought would increase her value. I saw her the other day. She's looking a little tired and haggard now, and hasn't had a date in months. Thankfully, there are lots of other women on the market just now and, because of that, I think she'll be open to a night in on the sofa with a fish and chip supper, a bottle of Lambrini and a romcom DVD, if I pitch my offer right.

This article first appeared in the Letchworth Chronicle.

Brother, Can You Spare Me A Dime?

Say what you will about Bill Blunt, but no-one has ever called him a doomsayer.

These are tough economic times we live in. And none tougher than for those of us who, like myself, were advised by that odious piece of human refuse, Danny Frobisher, to invest in banking stocks just before Christmas. At the time, it all sounded such a reasonable proposition. In his own, inimitable, words (uttered as he downed his fifth double vodka followed by an advocaat 'chaser') "They're as safe as houses, boys!"

I don't think I need to rehearse the world events that have since given the lie to his assertion. Suffice it to say that Danny Frobisher hasn't shown his face in the saloon bar of The Rampant Stallion for nigh on a month, and the smart money's on it being a good while before he ever does.

What little of my life savings that were left after Mrs Blunt and her fish-loving paramour rifled my pockets after our acrimonious divorce have thus gone up in smoke or, at the very least, have gone to fund the annual bonus of some undeserving City type.

All of this is a roundabout way of explaining why my postings to this blog have been a trifle intermittent of late. Apart from spending more time than was perhaps reasonably necessary in trying to locate Mr Frobisher (the better to be able to punch his lights out), I have been forced to emerge from my supposed 'retirement' in order to earn a bean or two. That's why the more observant of my readers will have noticed that I now have a regular column in the Twickenham Globe. My weekly tips on Surviving The Credit Crunch have already been well-received, and there's even talk of my articles being syndicated in the Cirencester Chronicle. Every cloud has a silver lining, as the bloody optimists keep on telling us.

While I wholeheartedly admire the attempts of fellow bloggers to single-handedly kick-start the UK economy, it will take more than buying a Turkish-manufactured flatscreen TV to do it. I fear that I'll be working for another decade, at least, before the Blunt finances are back on an even keel. If it needs the trenchant words of a man who is prepared to tell it like it is, then so be it.

(Self) Love Is All You Need on Valentine's Day

With less than a week to go before Valentine's Day, I know there will be many single fellows out there agonising over how to spend the evening.

That's why Bill Blunt has been working on the Valentine's Survival Kit. No more agonising about which over-priced restaurant to take you beloved to. No more agonising over whether you've even got a beloved... We've brought together everything you need for February 14th to be spent on your own, in your flat, in comfort.

Here it is - for the low, low cost of just £15 inc VAT. Included are a Valentine's Card from 'X' and a pack of tissues to dry your eyes after watching the romantic chick flit that's also included.

Imagine what you'll save - with the average meal out costing at least double!


Buy it now - you know it makes single sense!

A Family Man

Say what you will about Bill Blunt, but there are few people in the world he would hesitate to urinate on if they were on fire. Common human decency, together with a bladder that’s not as functional as it used to be, mean I would rarely pass up an opportunity to extinguish the flames if a fellow human being were suffering in anguish while being burned alive.

There’s always an exception that proves the rule, however. In the case of the Honourable Member for Darlington, I’d keep my legs well and truly crossed.

What can be said about Alan Milburn that hasn’t already been said? He started out his political career working in a Socialist bookshop in Newcastle, peddling Marxist tracts to anyone who accidentally stepped over the threshold of Days of Hope - rising, inexorably, to a place in Tory Blair’s cabinet as Secretary of State for Health. Whilst in office, he oversaw the introduction of the so-called Private Finance Initiative – for which read letting the private sector construct hospitals, which they’d then lease back to the NHS at huge cost to the public purse.

In a little-appreciated annexe to his career, he also abolished Community Health Councils, the last vehicle for democratic influence in the health service (which, for more than a quarter of a century, had kept the worst excesses of NHS managers in check).

As Wikipedia so succinctly summarises:

“Following his resignation as Secretary of State for Health (to spend more time with his family) [in June 2003] Alan Milburn took a post for £30,000 a year as an adviser to Bridgepoint Capital, a venture capital firm heavily involved in financing private health care firms moving into the NHS, including Alliance Medical, Match Group, Medica and Robina Care Group.”

Whatever Milburn’s real motives may have been, his family clearly thought better of them since, in September 2004, he returned to Blair’s government as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster – a role he renounced once Gordon Brown was appointed as Prime Minister in June 2007. Since then, he’s continued as a constituency MP for Darlington. He might have gained some solace when he accepted Pepsico’s offer of a £25,000 a year ‘to attend a handful of meetings and offer advice on health, nutrition and the company's "strategic direction"’.

Now, it's been 'reveled' (sic) that Milburn has been invited to head up a ‘new commission’ on social mobility. We can only presume that Gordon Brown would much prefer Mr Milburn to be inside his tent, rather than outside.

Now, there’s a tent I’d rather not be near to if it was on fire...

Back in The Saddle on The Twelfth Day of Christmas

Young Justin was on the blower to me today. He could hardly contain his excitement, having spent the evening analysing my stats, courtesy of Statcounter.

'Pa! Pa! Pa!' he exclaimed. 'Seems like you've got your audience back!'

I can't pretend I wasn't pleased. Over the last six months, my blog has been dying a slow death, the victim of infrequent postings and the ramblings of a mind which (I don't mind confessing) has been frequently addled by a cheaper whisky than the one I was used to in my days at the top of my profession.

The weekly reports from Justin have made for depressing reading. The glory days when my simple blog could pull in thousands of readers a month have long gone - Bill Blunt was a busted flush! Quite how grim the situation had become can be glimpsed from this graph, which shows the readers who've visited Bill since I made my debut on the internet in 2006...


My theory that there was an audience out there desperate to Read It Like It Is about Sainsburys bargains, Wetherspoons pubs and cheap Ryanair flights to Europe had clearly not held up to scrutiny. If this blog was a listed company, the vultures of the administrators would be circling overhead even as you read these lines.

But no! According to Justin, old Bill's still got a bit of life in him, so those vultures can just pitch themselves off in the direction of another victim.

It's all down to the turn of the year, apparently. My simple, humble New Year Wishes posting drew an unprecedented number of visitors. Every picture tells a story...



Justin furnished me with the full data and, as you can see, a steady stream of visitors (mainly from the Indian subcontinent, it has to be said) found me by Googling 'New Year Wishes'.



There's a lesson in there, somewhere and, once I've worked it, out I'll be back on course to make this blog the first port of call for anyone looking to pick up a cheap ready-meal at their local Sainsburys after a pint or two in a nearby Wetherspoons.

In the meantime - नया साल Wishes to all my readers in Mumbai, or elsewhere.

New Year Wishes

I ventured into town yesterday for my annual trip to the sales. This news will doubtless come as something of a shock to those readers who imagine old Bill is immune to the seduction of retailers.

It shouldn't do. A semi-retired journalist has to make his limited income stretch as far as he can, and a canny trip to the sales has become a staple in my quest to make ends meet.

Of course, those of my vintage may well remember when, here in the UK, we had something called The January Sales. They at least allowed a certain amount of time to pass before we had to endure the horror of seeing everything we'd bought as Christmas presents for our nearest and dearest savagely reduced in price.

Now, the sales begin not just on Boxing Day, but in the days (and weeks) leading up to Christmas. If you're after a new sofa, in fact, there afre few days of the year when you won't manage to catch one in the sales. Amazingly, millions of people spent their Christmas Day on the internet, taking advantage of online sales to supposedly save yet more money. That's one rubicon-shaped threshold I haven't stepped over.

In these uncertain times, though, it's clear that folk aren't spending as much as they have done in previous seasons. Wandering around PC World and Currys looking for a laptop yesterday, a sense of the nervousness of retailers could be glimpsed. Of a good two dozen laptops on display, fewer than a quarter were in stock - and I don't think it was because they'd been flying off the shelves. I was invited to buy the display model (at no additional discount, I might add), but the risk averse, anti-MRSA side of me baulked at the idea of a machine that hundreds of people had already had their digits on. I sensed a real anxiety in the sales staff, and I only hope they're still in jobs this time next month.

As for other shops... well, Next wasn't as busy as I remember from previous years, and good old M&S had little to offer in the way of real bargains. The latter had already shot their bolt with a series of pre-Christmas discount days when all stock was reduced by 20%

It's cold out there, campers - so don't forget your booties!

All the very best for 2009!

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

Well, it's that time of year when I make my annual posting to a blog that has become - err... just a tad moribund of late.

It's my chance to save a small fortune on Christmas cards, and save the planet to boot, as I bring friends and family up to date with my life over the past year, with the Bill Blunt Round Robin.

First off, apologies are due to Justin, Jasper and Barbara who, by the time they read this, will probably be preparing to open their Christmas presents from their old pa. Knowing their prediliction for popular music, I decided last week to buy them all gift vouchers from that solid retail giant, Zavvi, who have today gone into administration. I have always prided myself on my prescience.

On a brighter note, my friends will - I hope - be pleased to learn that I spurned the dark corner of my soul that almost tempted me to make contact with the ex-Mrs Blunt. Once I had sobered up, and come to my senses, I realised what a favour Tommy Fishfinger had done for me.

But it's been a strange old year. The credit crunch has brought a chill wind to a world that's grown giddy on borrowing. Let's hope 2009 brings a healthier approach to economics and finance. It won't do us any harm. It's A Wonderful Life, really...

So, my condiments of the season to blog readers and writers of the world, one and all!

Getting On With Life

Separation... divorce ... the break-up of a family. It's never as 'amicable' as some people would like you to think.

I don't wish to rehearse the circumstances that led to the breakdown of my marriage to Mrs Blunt. It isn't really of any interest to my readers to know that, after almost three decades with a woman who (single-handedly) helped Scottish & Newcastle Breweries to achieve one of the healthiest profit ratios of any UK listed company, our relationship foundered (or should that be floundered?) on the rocks when she fell into the arms of an erstwhile fishmonger from Ipswich. That's too much information for anyone to have to digest. Even with a side helping of chips.

I thought I had put all this behind me. Then, my eldest son (Justin) furnished me with the latest 'stats' from my blog. I was expecting them to make grim reading - after all, why would anyone bother checking in on a blog that seems to be updated only when the moon's blue? But I wasn't prepared for his findings.

'Pa!' he exclaimed. 'Take a look at this!' Did I detect a note of relish in his voice, as he showed me how my site had been 'chanced upon' via Google searches - courtesy of Statcounter.com?


As you can see - quite clearly - someone, somewhere, is trying to get in touch with Enid! I know it can't be the fishmonger - he's supposed to be with her now, as they enjoy their place (or should that be 'plaice'?) in Norfolk. So, what's going on?

Take a look at that entry for 29 November - mid-morning.

Call me an investigative journalist if you must, but I can't help feeling that a search via Google for a divorce club in Ipswich, so swiftly followed two days later by a hunt for Mrs Blunt's e-mail address tells a story all of its own. What if Mrs B and the fishmonger have fallen apart? I always thought that mackerel and Mackesons weren't the best table-mates.

Just as I thought I had got over her, her spectre comes back to haunt me. If you're out there, Enid... I'm still here for you! Whatever you've heard, or read about my life since you left, it isn't true. You know where I am, if you ever want to come back. And I promise you - faithfully - I will NEVER make disparaging comments about your size ever again.

Google Ate My Spam

It's not often that Bill Blunt waxes lyrical about a product. It takes more than the inducement of a free razor and gel to prod Bill into endorsing something, as my regular readers will know. At the same time, I think I have been around long enough to know when a product doesn't deliver.

I'm of a generation that thought the Welfare State was designed expressly to prevent anyone under the age of 70 ever having to encounter reformed bits of pig, still less to have to eat the stuff. I know there are some (mainly those who lived through the War) who will try to tell you that Spam has it's virtues, but I'm not one of them. Too many Spam fritters for school lunch made that inevitable, I'm afraid. That's why, when I learned that Googlemail had a 'Spam Filter', I was fairly relaxed. I wanted nothing to do with the stuff.

Thanks to the eagle eye of my son, Justin, however, I now realise there's another meaning to the word 'Spam'.

'Pa,' he said, just yesterday ... 'take a look at THIS!' With the flick of a mouse, he took me to a place I never knew existed.

I've had a Googlemail account for over four years. It was Justin who persuaded me to become one of what he termed the 'early adopters'. What he failed to do, however, was tell me that Googlemail has a very sophisticated 'Spam Filter'. It came as something of a shock to discover that the Mighty Google was able to weed out a huge amount of supposedly 'unwanted' mail. 24,572 items, in fact.

Call me an investigative journalist if you must, but I was intrigued to find out exactly what it was that Google was automatically filtering out of my in-box. Well, here it is...


As you can see, GoogleMail has not only prevented me from winning a vast array of international lotteries over the last 4 years, but has also denied me the ability to help an awful lot of people in Africa - many of whom are apparently distantly related to me, and who have been involved in tragic accidents. If the Mighty Google had only kept it's nose out, I could even have had a larger manhood, with access to almost unlimited supplies of cheap Viagra.

I, for one, would quite like to have made contact with the lovely-sounding Loreta Tamala, Rene Cammie et al, but I suppose it's too late now.

It's pure speculation as to whether my life would have been different without the interference of the Googlemail spam-filter. But I can't help feeling that being a multi-millionaire, distributing my largesse across the African continent, and availing myself of a more pronounced manhood, would have made the last four years altogether more interesting.

When I tried to explain this to Justin, he merely laughed. I can only put that down to the folly of youth. It's more than slightly annoying that I've missed such a myriad of opportunities... thanks to the so-called (for that is exactly what it is) Googlemail spam filter.

The Dawn of An Old Era?

Only a hardened misanthrope could have been failed to be moved by the sight of the youthful Barack Obama speaking in Chicago earlier this morning. The world has shifted on it’s political axis – and not before time.
Speaking to a nation that was less divided than it had been for a generation, Obama told how a 106 year-old voter he had met had lived through everything from the dust bowl, the New Deal, the second world war, the hatred of post-war racism in America through to man reaching the moon and going on to dismantle the Berlin Wall.

Somewhere, within the rhetoric, there is a message, and it’s one we had better get used to. The time’s they have a-changed.

When my fellow journalist, HG Wells, visited the Soviet Union in 1920 to stand witness to the great advances a socialist economy had brought to an otherwise backward, peasant society, he was scathing in his assessment. By embracing Marxism, Russia had embarked on a road to tyranny. In an era when the King of Shaves Azor was only a glint in his grandmother's eye, Wells only had to take one look at the effigies of Marx to know what had to be done:

"About two-thirds of the face of Marx is beard, a vast solemn woolly uneventful beard that must have made all normal exercise impossible. It is not the sort of beard that happens to a man, it is a beard cultivated, cherished, and thrust patriarchally upon the world. It is exactly like Das Kapital in its inane abundance, and the human part of the face looks over it owlishly as if it looked to see how the growth impressed mankind... A gnawing desire grew in me to see Karl Marx shaved. Some day, if I am spared, I will take up shears and a razor against Das Kapital; I will write The Shaving of Karl Marx."

Alas, Mr Wells never did get round to shaving Karl Marx’s beard. But if he had, he might have discovered John Maynard Keynes beneath it. A liberal to the core, it was Keynes who came up with the idea of an active economic policy by government that would stimulate demand in times of high unemployment – by spending on public works, whether that be a new dam, a new highway or (almost a century later) an infrastructure that supports the environment, rather than works against it.

Keynes had a fair point. Personally, I’m glad to have a proto-Keynesian at the helm of the British economy at this difficult time. Gordon Brown has already shown his willingness to bite the bullet. We know he’ll borrow to invest. The real test will be how far Obama follows suit. Let’s hope his grandmother, who lived through the New Deal, taught him how to suck eggs...

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Those who have known Bill Blunt a good while will know he’s not a man whose endorsement is easily bought. As a columnist at the Stockport Sentinel, I built my reputation for impartiality by never being swayed by a freebie.

That’s why I was sceptical (to say the least) when - courtesy of those fine people, Kevin and Sylvie, at FMB – I was asked to ‘test-drive’ the new Azor shaving system by King of Shaves.

I have always had something of a professional interest in shaving equipment, anyway. I rarely trumpet the fact that my grandfather lost thousands of pounds in an ill-fated venture to design and market the perfect razor blade. As a project, it went well-enough, until he took it to market, that is. Lady Retrospect is a harsh woman, I know, but he’d have saved himself a few bob if he’d realised that promoting Blunt Razors was always going to be something of an uphill battle.

The Azor media pack, when it arrived yesterday, was initially impressive. Less so when my ageing laptop couldn’t access the free CD that came with it. Would it be churlish to expect King of Shaves to send out a high spec laptop just to let me view their images and logos? I think not. As it is, the web already has images aplenty for me to look at.

Well, what’s different about the Azor? As a British contender against the might of multi-nationals Gillette and Wilkinson Sword, it certainly cuts a dash in the design stakes. Cool and sleek, it’s a departure from the over-engineered, garish orange, blue and silver Gillette Fusion, which seems to sprout an extra blade every month. King of Shaves have bucked the trend, and stuck with four blades.

It appeals to my innate sense of economy, too. In a time when money is tight, there’s something to be said for a razor that costs half the price of its competitors, and doesn’t require a battery to make it work.

So far, so good, then. But what’s it like to shave with? Alas, my divorce from Mrs Blunt means I couldn’t submit the Azor to the toughest of tests (one which even the infamous Prolectix Epliator, with its 36 discs rotating and twisting bunches of hairs together and plucking them from the roots ‘like a large pair of tweezers’ was never really up to).

I had to be content with using it on myself, then. The flexible head certainly seemed to make the razor hug my famously rugged chin much more closely than other razors I’ve used. And four blades were more than enough for the task of removing my ‘Mexican Bandit’ stubble. I hope it wasn’t just the psychological fact of having read all the accompanying hype that made me feel that it did, indeed, produce a closer shave.

I hope I wasn’t mistaken, but I’m sure I got more than my normal share of admiring glances from the barmaids when I sashayed into the bar at The John Laird for my usual post-prandial whisky last night.

Ten Days That Shook The World

Hovering on a precipice is never an easy thing to do, at the best of times. When you're a newspaper editor faced with day after day of imminent financial apocalypse, however, it must seem near-impossible.

Staring into the abyss can get a bit monotonous when it's a daily feature of life. After all, there are only so many times readers want to know that their savings in some obscure Icelandic bank have gone down the plug hole. When we've already been told that we're on the brink of disaster, only the actual disaster is 'news'. It must all start to feel as if you're one of those chaps who used to parade our town centres carrying billboards proclaiming that 'The End is Nigh'.

For most of us mere mortals, it's easier to just switch off and watch The X Factor than to try to understand the intricate details of multi-billion pound bail-outs of our financial institutions. Gordon Brown, meanwhile, is demonstrating the kind of firm leadership we all wished he'd shown from the day he became PM. Anyone who was around during the last big market collapse (under the Tories) might be forgiven for feeling more reassured that we have a dour Scot at the helm in these difficult times. I know I am.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Brown seems to have an instinctive grasp of economics, even if his political judgement hasn't always been what it might be - witness his dithering over any number of issues over the past year. Well, now that the chips are down, he's rising to the challenge. I suppose a decade or more of privatisation and deregulation has taught us that the market doesn't always know best and, suddenly, nationalisation doesn't make us feel dirty any more. Still, I can't help feeling that £50billion of taxpayers money shouldn't really be 'injected' into institutions that have hardly demonstrated they can use money wisely. Far better to invest it in some decent, green, infrastructure.

It's not all doom and gloom, however. There are an awful lot of estate agents out there getting very good at Solitaire, I hear. After years of making a mint by doing err... not a great deal, really ... their chickens have finally come home to roost. According to the Daily Telegraph, they're now selling, on average, just one house a week. Such a shame.

The Stuff of Nightmares?

After a life-time working in the hard-bitten world of football journalism, it's perhaps understandable if my attitude to 'art' was coloured just a tad by the apres-match banter in the saloon bar of the Dog & Duck in Stockport. We weren't much for chewing over the merits of theatre, paintings, the cinema or sculpture in those days.

Nevertheless, there's always been a bit of Bill Blunt that's had a sneaky regard for culture. That's why I joined the throngs in Liverpool, last night, to watch the finale of La Machine's visit to the city.

Some have argued that around £1 million for a piece of street theatre was a waste of public money. I can't agree. There are worse abuses of public finance than this. The giant mechanical spider that made Liverpool its home for three days has drawn huge crowds, and sparked lively discussions amongst friends, neighbours and workmates for the whole of the period. Last night's musical and pyrotechnic ballet, as the creature moved through the streets to the mouth of the Birkenhead tunnel, was wondrous to behold.

My colleague on The Times, Donald Hulera, spent 24 hours in Liverpool covering the story, but skipped off before the grand finale, missing the best of the weather and the best of the show. Like so many cosmopolitan visitors to the north, he missed the point. Was it worth it? Donald couldn't decide.

The crowd that assembled to witness the spider's swansong was of all ages, and included youngsters who, after an evening watching La Princess parade through the streets, are likely to be much less traumatised next time they see a spider in the bath - after all, once you've seen the mother of all spiders, anything else pales into insignificance.



A good dousing of water is clearly the antidote to spiders - however big. There'll be quite a few less pigeons around Lime Street station for the next few weeks too, I'll bet. And that's got to be worth £1m of anyone's money.

August

I can't pretend to be a poet. And I wouldn't seek to even convince you that I had even heard of 'R. Combe Miller'. However, having spent the last week in my allotment shed sheltering from the grey rains, when I read these lines from Mr/Mrs/Ms Miller...

"Fairest of the months!
Ripe summer's queen
The hey-day of the year
With robes that gleam with sunny sheen
Sweet August doth appear"

... I have come to realise that poets know nothing.

Not about meteorology. Or rain. Or Britain in August, anyway.