The British Weather!

England on a summer's day - sultry, sunny and still - I think not! Wet, windy and wild is more like it. Where has our summer gone? Is this the product of global warming or just a typical British summer? Whatever - crossing on the tiny ferry from Hayling Island to Portsmouth this morning was a bit of an adventure. Picture a small flat bottomed landing craft traversing the narrow stretch of Langstone Harbour in a Force Nine gale on a raging tide, the boat bucketing and dipping like one of those rides at the funfair with a bit of sea spray thrown in and you won't be far off the mark. The boat in the picture below is the Harbour Master's and not the Hayling Ferry, I hasten to add.

And there whilst crossing, on my starboard side, was the concrete structure of the Mulberry, in the picture on the left ( the sea was definitely not this colour this morning). It was one of the floating harbours for the D-Day invasion which didn't make it out of the harbour, and which is the setting for my marine mystery crime novel, Deadly Waters. Surrounding it were fishing boats and private yachts and I could just envisage Inspector Horton climbing on to the Mulberry to discover the dead body of local head teacher, Jessica Langley. But enough of that, or I'll give the plot away.

Lots of more familiar sights which feature in Deadly Waters, Tide of Death and The Suffocating Sea as I walked towards the beach in Portsmouth, and lots of ideas too bubbling up for more novels but for now back to the current one I'm writing, which as yet has no title but is set on the Isle of Wight and elsewhere, not necessarily in the UK... Meanwhile, I guess I'll just have to wait and see if summer does arrive in England. I know, I might have a very long wait and if I blink I'll probably miss it.