But then you are used to hot weather on Australia.

The problem in the UK is plantlife and wildlife. Many trees and shubs have been shocked by the extremely dry weather for England, and have gone into an early false autumn. Many trees are already shedding leaves or they are turnjng brown. 2 months early. And for planets that form their buds for next year they are starting to do that far too early, so they will most likely lose the buds before they mature and not flower next year, or the early activity could kill them. And the other thing is fruit and seed volume. When it's a really wet year you don't always get a lot of fruit because the plants are using the excess water to grow, rather then flower. But in a really dry drought situation they go into a survival mode and produce easy more then usual because they think they might die, so go all out to create offspring. This initially seems great for the owner with an abundance of fruit or flowers. But those trees and plants might then have expended too much energy and die. I had 2 last trees and 3 apple trees die in previous years because of strange weather patterns.

Sorry the gardener in me coming out.

My Oak tree seems to have produced a lot of Acorns this year. Just hope that's ok. It's about 50 years old so should have a strong root system though.

And no hosepipe ban in West Sussex yet, so that's something. All other counties around me have them or are about to get them. Seriously thinking of building a water storage well. I'm in a water meter to have to pay for the amount used, rather then the older fixed rate regardless. So if I could store more from rainwater I wouldn't have to pay to waste the garden. I have 4 water butts but they ran out within a week of the drought. Visited large gardensx such as National Trust a lot of thr old gardens have deep storage ponds for storing specifically for watering their gardens. Therefore I'm thinking of something similar. Dug a big hole, bury something to hold the water, and feed it from the garden log cabin roof. Should be able to collect enough over winter and then use an electric pump and hose to water the garden from it.