Brollywood

If you want to wind me up, just say something apocalyptic about the weather.

That's what one of my bosses did at the beginning of the day today.

"It's going to be very, very bad indeed," he said. "The weather man's been on the phone and it's a couple of inches at least. We've got to be on standby."

Now you may be thinking 'what a softie is dailykeith, worrying about a bit of rain'.

But if you lived in Gloucestershire in 2007 and are still around to tell the tale, you'll understand exactly what I am on about.

For July 20, 2007 was the 'day the rains came', as it was headlined, bringing flooding that lasted for days and weeks across the county. That particular day was so bad, our eldest son was stranded in his car all that night and into the next morning on the southbound carriageway of the M5 motorway.

It has led to a nervousness in these parts about the elements that will probably last for years to come.

So any attempt to hype up the slightest bit of bad meteorological news doesn't exactly go down too well.

Emma, one of my colleagues and fellow blipper, checked our archives and found that, while 50mm of rain was forecast for today, 130mm fell on that awful day in 2007.

So it was never going to be the end of the world. But it did destroy my poor old brolly.