I am writing to you to express my anger at your blatant disregard for my happiness and well-being. I feel I have been let down and I am sure this is not the only complaint letter you have received of a similar nature.

My name is Ben Jameson. I generally consider myself a reasonably happy and cheerful soul, although as with many people my mood does tend to fall somewhat in line with changes in climate (Seasonal Affective Disorder, I believe they call it). For this very reason, I look forward to each and every summer immensely, knowing that the extra sunshine will brighten up my day no matter what my problems. In fact, if I have any stressful tasks waiting to be completed I often put these off until summer knowing that the improvement in weather will make the task seem somewhat less stressful and more productive.

Before I continue I would like to thank you personally for the wonderful April that we had - it is a rare occasion that, in early spring, myself and a few friends can enjoy a hot weekend at the seaside, armed only with a few cans of beer and a Frisbee. This year, however, such a rare occasion occurred not once, but twice, one of which also happened to be bank holiday (does life get any better?!).

Over the years, faith in the British summer has declined somewhat, as I'm sure you're aware. However, last year's performance was a great effort, and coupled with the great weather in April we looked set for an even better summer this year. I cannot speak for the general population, but I for one was certainly beginning to gain renewed appreciation for your weather-controlling abilities, which finally seemed to be falling in line with other, traditionally better weather-controlled European countries such as Spain and Italy.

On 20th June I travelled to Glastonbury with a few friends for the festival of contemporary performing arts. By this stage I had already been very disappointed by your apparent late start of summer but assumed there must be good reason for this and that you would make up for lateness with quality. I did, however, foolishly think that you would take pity on the thousands of festival-goers that weekend. How wrong I was! That weekend saw one of the biggest rainfalls in England on record. What were you thinking? Did somebody press the wrong button? I have been paying taxes for more than 9 years now and expect to be able to enjoy a weekend of camping once in a while without fear of drowning. Those responsible for this should be sacked without question.

And so the summer continued. I say "summer", when really the only things about it that were remotely summer-related were the lack of football and the 6 full weeks of screaming kids all over the place. I understand that you must have had a lot of rain to get rid of but doing it in the summer rather than spreading it out throughout the rest of the year is just plain stupidity. I really do think you should consider exporting rain to other countries in future if stocks get too high, rather than dropping the whole lot on your own people.

I now have a whole cupboard of stressful tasks still waiting to be completed which are now going to have to wait until next summer (along with any more that materialise between now and then). In fact, the only stressful task I did manage to complete was moving house, which just happened to fall within the few mediocre days of summer we were privileged enough to receive. For this I count myself fortunate. For my new house I bought an outdoor table and chair set and a barbeque. Together these cost me close to £100. Needless to say I didn't get much use out of either (although the barbeque did come in handy one night when I was locked out of the house and needed a hand getting through an upstairs window - I cannot let you take the credit for this I'm afraid).

I am prepared to let this year's situation slide as a sign of gratitude for last year's summer. However, I think your organisation has a lot to think about between now and next April and hope that the people responsible for this year's fiasco are properly disciplined and that legal action is taken where necessary. If this situation does occur again I will be forced to escalate my complaint to your superiors, and may even consider moving to Spain. I will also expect full reimbursement of any garden furniture / barbeques I have purchased in this country if this ends up being the case.

I trust you will take this matter as seriously as I do and await your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Ben Jameson

Many thanks for your letter dated 15th October in reply to my earlier complaint regarding this year's summer. I found the information you sent me very helpful.

I must admit I was at first a little confused, as I have always been convinced that your organisation was responsible for weather control in this country. However, when I explained this to a friend and showed him the letter, he began to laugh uncontrollably and told me that I must be mad. He said that you have no control over the weather and are only able to forecast how it will turn out.

I therefore would like to apologise to you for the somewhat aggressive tone of my previous letter. You obviously have no control over these things and I feel rather stupid for having previously believed that you did.

Please can you therefore forward me full details of the organisation which does control the weather, and I will pursue my case with them. Also, with your permission, I would like to use the information you sent me as evidence to support my case against them.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours sincerely,

Ben Jameson

Many thanks for your most recent letter dated 5th December. Please accept my apologies for the delay in replying, it has been both Christmas and New Year in Lincoln in the space of a week so as you can imagine things have been quite hectic. The weather has not been too good either but then you probably know that already.

Thanks once again for the information you enclosed with your letter, I found the information most useful. However, I was very disappointed to learn that your organisation focuses solely on forecasting the weather and makes no effort to control it. I find it very odd that you are willing to leave this up to the "complex processes in the atmosphere" which clearly are not doing a very good job.

I have decided to start my own weather-controlling organisation and I would very much appreciate your help in doing so. Please can you send me full details of what equipment I would need in order to do this and where I might obtain this equipment from. Any other information you could provide me with would also be welcomed.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours sincerely,

Ben Jameson