Posted by Lionel Hill on June 03, 1999 at 11:23:28 from naxos.labyrinth.net.au:
In re-reading 'Wake' by Keith Shackleton (Lutterworth press 1954) which I first read in 1970 I came across this:
When we were children there were real summers...During the 1930s we had to water the cricket pitches with little centrifugal sprayers; and people discussed droughts and water levels; we were made to wear straw hats at school as a precaution against what was called "evaporation" etc.
In the stories, the summers at the lake are good enough and AR's drawings open skied enough for a Australian like me to think that perhaps the lake wasn't in England (when I was sleuthing its true identity from afar).
AR was accurate in most things. Was he accurate about that idyllic weather?
Wake is well worth a read.