I’m wet. Not moist, not even a bit soggy. Very very NOT dry. The sort of wet that would make Saint Swithin think, ‘Maybe they’ve had enough for now – perhaps, on hindsight, forty days and nights was a bit excessive!” (But he’s gonna have to wait until the 15th to condemn us to biblical amounts of persistent precipitation, and anyway, we’re doing quite well enough without his help, thank you!) Wetter than a wet week in Whitby. More moist than a bath full of nuns looking for the soap. Dank doesn’t come into the equation.

We’ve had a few days of blistering heat, high pressure, oppressive atmosphere and no air. I was starting to wonder whether we’d entered a phase of massive coronal discharge, with solar flares scorching our otherwise green and pleasant land. But following some astute scientific investigation, availing myself of one of the most tenacious and analytical minds of our time (well, Google) I can inform you that:

Analysis of Solar Active Regions and Activity from 01/2100Z to 02/2100Z : Solar activity was very low. No flares occurred during the past 24 hours. The solar disk was void of spots. The geomagnetic field is expected to remain quiet for the next three days (03 - 05 July).

In fact, the darn thing looks positively spotless, not a black-head in sight. We officially have a zit-free sun! Bloody hell and we only bought that Clearasil at the weekend!

Today, by way of contrast, the manna from heaven is presented in liquid form. Which is typical. Today I needed to venture out. We have invited some friends over for dinner tomorrow and I needed to shop. Well, it is my way of showing I care – somehow getting Tescos to deliver seems to be cheating when it is for a dinner party. Besides, I like to fully examine the plumpness and quality of any breasts before committing – don’t like my breasts too big, my loins too lardy or my plums too pert. Buns have to be beautiful and grapes nicely bunched. A good broddle around in fresh produce is medicine for the soul. But therein lies the challenge, when the shops are separated from me by an excessive over-order of weather. We’re talking serious down pouring here; rain that pelts down with enough ferocity to drill holes in your head. Now I’ve never much been one for trepanning, even when it is meant to release evil spirits from the head - I surely have a few of those - and certainly not in the course of buying a stick of garlic bread! Protective headgear is required before venturing out. Where’s my pith helmet? Someone’s taken the pith!

So to the shops, cap on head shielding eyes and keeping specs clear, but in the process managing to channel all rain within vicinity into a single torrential stream running down back of neck. I feel assaulted. Nape Rape! Swiftly seek sanctuary in sweltering supermarket where suddenly steaming starts. It’s like walking through smog. You see, the supermarket hasn’t lost any of its heat accumulated over the last week and is now but a pine panel away from being a sauna. Mmmm, there’s a gap in the market: Sainsbury’s Sauna-and-Shop. Bring your own towel. Men and women only on alternative weekends and no canoodling in the bakery department – “Put those baps down Sir”, “No I don’t want to see your Italian sausage!”

I should have remembered that Friday in Salford is Rent-a-Muppet day, a fact that I was reminded about upon entering said purveyors of finest fruit, veg and groceries in the entire kingdom (and yes, I did actually check it out on MySupermarket.com!!! Have a look – I was quite surprised. You can do your online shop just the same as with Tescos or whoever; they compare the prices and let you send your order to whichever worked out to be the cheaper retailer! Well impressed. And Tescos WAS the best value for ‘my basket’ so ASDA can go stick that in their non-representative trolley!) So, back to Muppet-central anyway. Muppet is a particularly appropriate term for most of the people in there – they looked like they all had someone with an arm up their arses working them. Why do people decide that the middle of a narrow isle is the best place to park two trolleys, a pram and basket-on wheels, while they have a good natter about Betty and her recurring corns, or the questionable merits of Tenna Lady? Why do teenage mothers bring the pre-school brats along and then not keep them under control? We have leashes for that sort of thing! Muzzles. You’d not get away with letting a dog loose in there unrestrained, and dogs don’t sneeze all over the mushrooms or try to stick carrots up their noses. Geez, I know it’s hot but lock the buggers in the back of your daddy’s four-by-four; just remember to crack open the window a bit and teach them to not lick the cigarette lighter. It’s not like anyone is gonna kidnap THAT snotty-nosed cabbage-patch reject anyway. No, dear, it isn’t puppy fat when the droopy-nappy, germ-ridden, snot monster can’t survive more than thirty seconds without another, “me wanna sweety now!” Sweetheart, catch it, bin it, kill it. It’s what Darwin would have wanted.

Now I have limited stamina, not a lot of strength for hauling shopping baskets round (even if they ARE cheaper than ASDA’s) so the sight of a checkout with hardly any queue is something of a relief. Except its Mable and Eddie in the queue in front of me. You’ll have met them. They’re in their 90s, tartan shopping trolley, hearing aids, put the ‘less’ into gormless. Sweet, I’m sure, and we’ll all grow old one day, but how many coupons?! How can you have more money-off coupons than items in your basket? Here’s how: only every fourth one is still in date. So, Bekki on the checkout, has to scan every one, and you can tell she’s not happy about this, especially when one is devoid of bar code and she has to flash at the manager for assistance. “No love, that’s your ration book and you used up your allowance for powdered egg and spam in 1953”. Now Mable and Eddie only use cash. Mable’s purse has somehow made it to the bottom of her tartan ‘Speed Shop Deluxe’ basket-on-wheels, and into which have been stacked the several bags of shopping. So out it all has to come amid must frustration and the worry that she has either left the purse at home or had it pinched, probably by the snot-monster. But all is well and the purse turns up, a little battered from its adventure at the bottom of her ‘cart’o’convenience’ and happy to relieve itself of the bulging stash of coinage that Mable’s been secreting away since that nice Mr Churchill was Prime Minister – before he started selling car insurance, Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes!

My friend Bekki (It feels we’ve known each other so long now that I’m sure we’ll feature on reciprocal Christmas card lists) has made the fatal mistake of asking if the wrinklies have a Tescos card. Frantic searching through purse, with vacant expression. “We don’t use cards, dear” explains Eddie, presumably thinking that somehow a credit card is required. “It’s for your points. Your clubcard points”. “Oh, no dear, we don’t do them. Just cash.”

Now I know I can be a little unforgiving, but if it is me being asked to pay £9.97, and I have a crisp new £10 note to hand (I suspect she irons them), then I would probably opt for handing that over and getting 3p change rather than counting out the full sum in bronze coins! I tell a lie – there were a couple of 50p pieces in there but you could tell she was parted with them only after much soul-searching and inner turmoil.

Behind me in the queue I now have two barely pubescent mothers who’s conversation seems to be largely about how fit someone called “Lozza” is and whether or not “Bethny’s a lucky cow to have been invited to his party”, which will be “well good, cos everyone’s gonna be there”. I’m not sure how valid, or indeed rare, Bethny’s invitation is if everyone is going to be there anyway, but I suppose it is nice to be asked. The snot monster, bored with queuing and already onto his second packet of ‘flumps’ is busy removing mars bars from the shelf and making a small construction out of them – maybe a fort, it is hard to tell. He’s avidly watched by second child, thankfully strapped into a push-chair (or buggy I think they are these days). Poor thing. Pig-tails pulled so tight it looks like she’s had plastic surgery and an expression of concentration reserved exclusively for the moments preceding the wafting forth of a green mist and the sure knowledge that Mummy will have more than just the shopping to unpack when she gets home. Remind me why I never had kids? Oh yeah, I’m gay. Thank fuck for that!

It might be pouring down outside, but it’s as hot as a blacksmith’s jock strap inside, and twice as humid. I can practically hear the pot of double cream curdling as I queue. Methinks strawberries and cream might end up as a cheesecake at this rate.

But at last my turn has come! Bekki looks at me with the glum disinterest of someone who has had the life sucked out of them and I notice Mable and Eddie now blocking the exit as they rearrange the contents of their ‘shop-o-matic turbo’. Thank heavens all my items scan without incident. I was worried that a missing bar-code might be enough to send Bekki over the edge. She already has the Samaritan’s number tattooed on her knuckles, but what is that I see, poking from her burgundy tabard pocket? Why, an invitation to Lozza’s party, no less! You see, there IS a god, innit!

Back at the car park, trying to straddle the veritable river that is now sluicing under my vehicle and with the distant honk from the horn of a barge that seems to have been misdirected from the Manchester Ship Canal and is heading this way, I load my bags of shopping into the boot. A few cars down I see Mable and Eddie talking to a large, skinny bloke in a black cowl, carrying a scythe. “No, we can’t possibly come now, you see, Friday she has her Bingo. You’ll have to come back another time...”