Scotsman George Frew knows a thing or two about the unpredictable nature of our climate . . .

Since the subject is the weather, we might as well start with that old seasonal joke in these islands: Q. How do you know when it's summer in Britain? A. The rain is warmer.

Ho, ho, ho - and it's off on holiday in our wellies we go. Last month was the wettest May on record. It might have been a tad damper when Noah was obliged to get busy building his Ark, but not by much, one suspects.

Mind you, the merry month of May was always tempting fate two Bank Holidays in one month? And what do Bank Holidays always herald, apart from motorway tailbacks, fractured couples and dysfunctional families? Rain, that's what.

Sheets of it, coming down in knives and forks, cats and dogs, stair-rods, what you will. Curtains of the stuff, persistent and peculiar and penetrating.

No-one ever went bust flogging umbrellas and raincoats in England, holes in the ozone layer notwithstanding. With the financial acumen native to his race, it took a Scotsman to invent and patent the coat that bears his name to this day the Macintosh. He took one look at the prevailing weather conditions and thought: "Och pennies from Heaven!"

Still, before we go drowning in despair, it's worth remembering that the last time May was a washout, the rest of the summer months were hot enough to have newspaper sub-editors dusting off their hoary old "Phew! What a scorcher" headlines.

That was back in 1984, when hapless photographers were dispatched by heartless picture desk editors to capture images on film of eggs frying on the bonnets of black taxi cabs 'oeufs au soleil' as Le Petit Blanc might have billed it on the menu. According to some amateur weather experts (surely an oxymoron, like 'military intelligence'?), when May is wet and unwilling to shine, June almost always compensates by being hot and bright.

Of course, as our grannies were forever warning us in those far-off days before global warming, "Ne'er cast a clout 'til May is out" or, in other words, "Do not discard your woollen underclothing until it's at least 90 degrees in the shade.

Wise words. A friend of mine at the Scottish Tourist Board has to deal with the Weather Question all the time. Tourists are forever asking her, "This weather, this so-called summer of yours where is it and when does it begin, exactly?"

She usually replies: "Between 6am and 10.30pm, anytime between June 1 and August 31." And then she goes on to point out the considerable advantages to be enjoyed by holidaying in the country (or anywhere else in the UK, come to that). "If you don't like the current weather, just hang about for ten minutes and it'll change."

But all you sun-worshippers should get ready to have the tanning lotion delivered by the truckload, if the Met men's forecast is accurate.

Prepare also to start hearing all those ridiculous drought warnings once more, in a country where rainfall is hardly an unknown quantity.

Or perhaps not. A quick word with the Met Office revealed that, contrary to speculation in some quarters, a wet month of May does not necessarily guarantee a scorching summer.

"That would be rather speculative," a spokesman said. "And anyway, it's far too early to predict what the summer will be like. "It's just not enough to say that because May was wet in 1984 and the summer was hot, that the same thing will happen this year.

I understand that folklore has a very broad and rather tenuous link to Nature, but we are scientists and use scientific methods."

So don't pack your wellies away just yet . . .