Freezing in Portsmouth

Welcome back. When it goes pearshaped the pears are hard and very unripe. For deep, inscrutable and almost labyrinthine reasons, I find myself back in the UK for a season, the season being the British summer. As we speak, the clouds lour (good word), presaging rain. Again. The cheerful young women on the BBC are insouciant and regard daytime temperatures of 13 degrees Celsius as entirely reasonable, which defies comprehension. I have as it is said here, 'ne'er cast a clout', May not being out yet; instead have piled on the 'clouts' and wish I had more.
Work tomorrow at a somewhat unprepossessing but necessary environment in order to earn a crust, cigarettes being of such a cost that loans and mortgages are required to fund the evil habit. Ergh.
A colder, smaller and less expensive resonance of Dubai, the image is of the Spinnaker Tower ( one 'n' or two, dependent on preference, it would seem) from whose lofty heights views over the Solent are incomparable. Except when it rains. I am advised the structure went astronomically over budget, which is comforting. So did the Millennium Bridge, the Channel Tunnel and the Welsh Assembly Building. Give these people calculators. A colleague with a history degree informs me (somewhat loftily) that the Palace of Westminster was similarly afflicted in the nineteenth century. Perhaps calculators are not required, merely a more robust economic worldwiew.