TO make optimal use of the word ‘understatement’ - it’s been an interesting couple of weeks weather-wise, hasn’t it? Last week featured rain that would have seen Noah reaching for his saw and nails, while glancing nervously at the sky and wondering what the giraffes were up to.

Where I work, on the edge of Ambleside, the River Brathay filled up so rapidly that it was actually higher than the road. Unfortunately, this being Cumbria, it was being held back by a dry stone wall, so the river was squirting out through the gaps between the stones and filling up the road.

True, it wasn’t all bad. Someone in a 17-plate Mercedes obviously presumed their car must be amphibious, and had attempted to drive through the deepening flood. When you pay that much for a car, I guess you just expect it to come with an automatic ‘boat’ mode. Still, I’m sure their carpets will dry out eventually. And their shoes and trousers.

My journey home (as I’m sure many of yours did too) featured lengthy hold-ups, road closures and those tense moments where you wonder if you’re going to make it through the deep bit. My current transport of delight is a compact Renault, which has its engine underneath the boot. I nearly passed out from holding my breath as I crept through the choppy waters of the A591.

Then on Monday Ophelia showed up in a right old mood. After angrily rampaging through Ireland, we received the tail-end of her strop, preceded by Armageddon-style weird-coloured skies and red sun. Once again, my little car proved to be a less-than-ideal choice. Its short-wheelbase and height, coupled with it being very light, saw me clenching the steering wheel as hard as I was clenching my teeth as I battled my wobbly way home along the same roads I’d thought I might drown on just days earlier.

Luckily, while the strong winds did their fair share of damage, we seem to have escaped relatively lightly. The odd sky colouration was apparently caused by Saharan dust and the smoke from the terrible fires in Spain and Portugal. How very continental. If you voted for Brexit in the hope of keeping the foreigners out, it would appear no-one told the atmosphere.

The ropey weather in itself is depressing. When you consider that we’ve had flooding and a hurricane and it’s still only a quarter-past autumn, the prospect of winter doesn’t seem very appealing. Still – who knows? The way the climate has been the last decade or so, we might have a hosepipe ban by Christmas. I’ll get my shorts and Hawaiian shirt ironed ready, just in case.

So here’s your long-range weather forecast for the rest of the year: November: Sunny intervals, with regular outbreaks of famine and patchy spells of pestilence. December: Frosty, but with occasional heavy frog showers and plagues of locust. January: End of days. We’ll know it’s imminent, because DFS won’t have a sale on.