For the past few days, the weather has been terrible. Since last Thursday, it's been very humid and hot (for Scotland, at least. This tends to play merry hell with your chemistry, especially if you're trying to keep everything dry, because water condenses out of the air onto all the cool glassware and into your reaction mixture.

Anyway, on Sunday the weather broke (finally) and it was thunderstorms all round. Champion, I though (although I did have to walk home in torrential rain, and my coat smelt like I've always imagined bigfoot might have smelt).

Monday - rain all day.

Tuesday - rain, and more thunderstorm action. By the time I left work at 4.30 with four of my workmates (Joanne driving), it was coming down in a dirty blatter that would have shocked Rob McKenna. For the most part, the motorway across to Glasgow was down to only one lane, but as we came down to the junction for the M8 (10 minutes from home), we were brought to a standstill by a huge flood of water that had claimed three cars already - they were up to the door-handles in water, and their occupants had relocated to the roof.

So the police response (rather than dismantling a section of the middle barrier and closing off one lane of the opposite side which, although flooded, was passable) was to bring down three sewer-cleaning trucks to suck up a load of water, drive off, dump it somewhere, and repeat. It took them a total of four hours, longer than it should have seeing as idiots in BMWs kept driving down the hard shoulder as if the law didn't apply to them somehow and blocking the trucks off.

Meanwhile, in order to try and stop myself from smacking my head off of the dashboard in frustration, I tried to keep myself amused. I phoned people on the mobile phone, finished my book I had been reading, but finally settled on tearing my bookmark up into little pieces, rolling the pieces into little balls and trying to flick them down Joannes top when she wasn't paying attention. Oh, and trying to avoid a slap from Joanne, too.

But anyway - it turns out that the nicest man in the world is an American, and he was in the car next to us last night. about an hour into the wait, he tapped on my window and passed in a couple of packets of fruit pastilles and one of those self-heating instant coffee cans. Later, he gave us all Crunchies (milk chocolate over a crispy honeycomb centre, for those not in the know) and got his one year old daughter to give us all a big wave and a smile from the comfort of her baby seat. Such a nice man and he completely refused to take any money from us.

Since he was so nice to us, we were in a good mood when we left, and I didn't at all mind helping to push two cars out of the flood, soaking my trousers to the knees and filling my shoes, before we crossed and I got home.

All this explains why I am now throwing a sickie and not going into work today.

Bo"although I have work at home so I don't feel guilty"urne