Weather watch

I spend my time at the moment looking at the weather - mainly at a big blue-grey blob on the BBC website that covers the UK and is moving North. I'm at a nice site near Kirkcaldy in Fife, overlooking the Firth of Forth, and when it's clear I can see Edinburgh and the Bass Rock. However, it's not clear most of the time: there's a yellow-grey mist over the water and a ferocious wind.

When I arrived here there were combine harvesters working late into the night in almost every field. It's been a terrible summer for the farmers, who were trying to get the wheat in within a 24-hour window in the weather. If they harvest the wheat wet, they have to spend a lot of money on fuel drying it, and they can't harvest when it's actually raining. So there was frenetic activity all around. And when that's over, there's the replanting - someone was frantically ploughing yesterday when there was still wheat standing in adjacent fields, but I guess when it's too wet they can't get the machinery onto the fields at all. I feel sorry for them - there must be quite a few of them who haven't managed to get everything in before the wind and rain hit again and it may be time to say goodbye to some of the harvest. Perhaps my farming correspondent (Dave?) would like to comment. I wonder what it's like down in Cornwall for him - apparently Devon has had a week's rain overnight. Wet cows?

We had gusts of up to 40 miles an hour last night - this isn't a damaging wind, nothing newsworthy, but it makes it practically impossible to sleep as the van rocks around constantly. At the moment, we're parked broadside on to the wind, but I'm going round 90 degrees later to decrease what the seamen call the 'windage' - and with any luck, the wind hitting the van on the nose will cut down the movement. Then I might be able to get some sleep! I spent last night periodically checking the weather on the BBC, interspersed with bouts of BBC7 Listen Again. Everyone on the site looks a bit worn out this morning, and some people at the end of the row have their tent guyropes lashed to their van, an operation which they must have performed during the night. I took the precaution of taking the awning in yesterday because it would have taken off.

I'm glad I walked into Lower Largo yesterday (a walk via the beach, about four miles round trip) because Bon had a good time, and I got milk and other necessities, so I can just hunker down today and see if tomorrow's weather is any kinder...