The Cruellest Month

"Oh, to be in England now that April's there," longed W Robert Browning in Home-Thoughts, From Abroad in 1845. Had he been writing last week, he might have been tempted to plagiarize T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land (1922):

"April is the cruellest month." Not for about 100 years had Britain witnessed such a miserable April, replete with buzzards, rainstorms and--finally--flooding.

Across much of the country, plunging temperatures brought record snowfalls and drifts as high as 15 ft. In some places, power cables were downed, vehicles were stalled, and hundreds of motorists were stranded--including a wedding party marooned for eleven hours aboard a bus on Salisbury Plain. In Scotland, a taxi driver, trapped by snow, burned half a tank of gas just to keep his cab warm, while he waited for assistance. Five schoolboys out on an endurance test were rescued after two nights on storm-swept Dartmoor; a medium had told police where to look. Horse racing, cricket and soccer games were canceled, and the bloom totally vanished from the Harrogate spring flower show.

Farmers were among the hardest hit; the storms destroyed fruit blossoms and vegetables and--in the north--buried and killed thousands of newborn lambs.

Among the few happy consequences: after 4-ft. snowdrifts prevented a christening at a Devon church, the vicar made his way to the local pub, where the postchristening celebrations were to have been held. The baby was baptized right there, over a champagne bucket.

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