The eccentric engineer - [network history]

IT HAS BEEN a poor summer, and my experience of building sandcastles in the rain, digging potatoes in the rain and, frankly, doing everything in the rain, is not one I want to repeat. The only consolation is that meteorologists have had an even worse time of it, partly because everyone seems to think the weather is their fault, but mainly because predicting the unsettled weather patterns is rather tricky, and when they predict wrong we blame them for that, too.