It’s bad enough having to watch the rain lashing against the window at home or in the office, but for some people the wet and windy weather has brought extra challenges to their jobs.
Dog walker Tracey Skelton, who lives in Lakenham, Norwich, has been wading through the rain around Lakenham Common with a number of furry friends who she says enjoy the wet weather much more than she does.
She said: “This morning I’ve been playing football with a Spaniel, she loves puddles and unfortunately there was a great big puddle in there so she decided to lay in it and roll in it. I’ve just had to dry her off with a towel and dry my hair.
“Later on I’ve got to go to Little Plumstead and take a big Labrador for a walk, so I’m going to be walking dogs all day. Sometimes I have indoor cat visits, so they’re nice on a day like today.
“On rainy days, for me it’s about keeping dry, having plenty of towels in the car, keeping the dogs dry in-between walks and grabbing a hot drink when I can because you get cold then you get wet so you need to do something to warm up.”
For Sam Watson from Norwich, who works as an electric linesman for UK Power Networks, the job becomes much more difficult in adverse weather, with strong gusts blowing trees down on top of power cables which he then has to get running again as quickly as possible.
He said: “We mend damaged overhead cables and on days like these with high winds we often get more work due to high winds, so me and my colleagues are on call all the time.
“You do get used to being up high with all the wind, there is some limitations, we can only go up if the wind is below 40mph because we’ve got cherry pickers and that’s their limitations with the wind.
“They provide us with good warm cold weather gear and we just go out and get on with it. The challenges are a combination of both the wind and the rain, especially at the moment with the trees obviously they get wet, then the wood gets wet and with the wind it increases the weight of the branches.”
Elaine Aylmer Gee has been volunteering at her local surgery in North Elmham near Dereham, and has been outside the practice in the rain fetching people’s prescriptions and showing patents to their appointments, while those without an appointment are unable to visit the surgery due to Coronavirus restrictions.
She said: “I do a couple of mornings a week and obviously because of COVID they are limiting the way people enter the surgery, so us volunteers stand outside at a barrier and people come for their prescriptions or for their appointments like routine blood tests.
“I do three to four hours outside at a time and it wasn’t much fun today, I wore the right clothes but it was just very wet.”
Other jobs EDP readers said they felt particularly sympathetic with on rainy days included builders up on scaffolding, telephone engineers and couriers.
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