Within minutes of the first cloud looming into view over St Neots, cllr King Cooper of Priory Park ward was on to the Citizen to blame Tory Paul Marcel. “It’s just not on,” said Cooper, “it was lovely and sunny yesterday and now it’s all cloudy. Probably the Tories’ fault!”

Marcel, meanwhile, and colleague Larry Hackman, were quick to point the finger squarely at self-styled Eynesbury activists Steve van der Whitevanman and Terrence Dougall. “I thought summer had come,” said award-winning councillor Hackman, “and then it went cloudy and there was a little bit of rain. You don’t expect it, do you? Liberal wankers.”

A spokesman for the Met office said that he wasn’t sure why everyone was so taken aback. “Honestly, we have 24 hours of sunshine and everyone gets the SPF50 out. It’s still officially winter until the 23rd, and even then it’s only spring, so it’ll rain even more. Stop looking so shocked.”

“Ooh, it’s breezy ain’t it!” commented One Stop customer Michelle Brooke, of Weston Court as she purchased her morning paper and twenty L&B. “I’ve got to cycle into town later, that’s going to be awful!”

Serving her, veteran cashier Patricia Stocker added, “I remember when it was this windy in 2002. The gutter came off my neighbour Betty’s house and went clean through her son’s car – it almost hit the dog!”

Social scientist Kate Badger, whose book Watching the Anglians hit the best-seller list recently, explained that “The English love to talk about the weather, and like nothing more than complaining about the slight extremes we experience.

“We don’t really have massive cyclones and hurricanes and typhoons – all of which are pretty much the same thing – so a stiff breeze is a really exciting meteorological event!”

Asked for their opinions, High Street wanderers today could only comment that “At least it isn’t raining”, and “I’m wearing three jumpers innit!” Visiting from Cambridge, Natalie Fields told the Citizen, “It’s really fucking annoying. These provincials can only talk about the fucking wind. I wanted to know where to get the bus back to Cambridge, and all anyone could tell me was that I must be cold, on account of the weather. Argh!”

Betty Bean, 61, regaled all who would listen with stories of how “When I were a lass, we had frost on the inside of the windows!”

Meanwhile, Jake Neskini, 22, said he had had enough of hearing about “ice on the Thames” from his parents.

It is thought that any adverse weather automatically triggers a response in those over fifty, who then feel compelled to inform their assorted descendants about how they’ve “never had it so good”. As well as the classic ice on the inside of the windows and the Thames freezing solid, other favourites include “the time it was so foggy you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face but still went to work” and “that month when it rained for twenty-eight days and we had to swim eight miles to school”.

Historians said that few of the stories had been proven, but that over-fifties had a great capacity for “mis-remembering” details. Dayve Cheesington, an Expert Scientist from Longsands School’s new Ernulf campus, said that he intended to look into the situation more deeply. “If you speak to my nan you get the impression that in the 1940′s, Britain was permanently under an icy lake of foggy water, but of course they ‘muddled through’. I think this is pure bollocks of the ‘A-levels were harder in my day’ variety.”

Cheesington will be interviewing anyone over fifty who can remember their own name accurately within the next few weeks.

On both Saturday and Sunday, the town woke up to a windy yet sunny day, only for it to cloud over by lunchtime. Despite the fact that this is typical British summer weather – especially during a bank holiday weekend – it took everyone by surprise.

“I can’t understand it,” said Linclare Place resident Orson Hedge, 52. “It’s August, and it’s a bank holiday, and it’s the carnival and all sorts. I’d planned a barbeque and now it’ll probably rain.”

The Met Office were unsympathetic. “What exactly did you expect?” asked Michael Shark. “This is exactly like when it snowed in winter and everyone walked around going ‘wow look it’s snowing’ and the whole country ground to a halt. It’s pathetic.”

Expert Scientists could offer no solution to the schizonphrenic British weather, which attracts tourists hoping to experience all four seasons within a few hours. “The only thing I can suggest,” said spokesman Guillaume la Trec of CERN, “is that you move somewhere else. Alternatively you could stop fucking whinging.”

“We aren’t going to stop complaining, are we,” spat council leader Julia Wayward. “We’re English, I mean come on, our national passtimes are complaining, and talking about the weather. I actually think it’s rather efficient to complain about the weather, thereby combining both activities into one session.”

Partner Irma Konnman said that his firm had laid on extra staff in the High Street and Market Square last Friday in order to ambulance-chase any victims of falling rigs and masonry. But this was made unlikely by the lacklustre illuminations. “I’m not expecting Blackpool or anything,” said Konnman, “but this is just taking the piss for a town of this size.”

Up until 2006, the Christmas lighting in St Neots had become wonderfully tacky, with “snow-effect” light strips and massive lighting gantries across the road, complete with real miniature trees suspended above the junctions.

But following last year’s fiasco when a lighting rig fell on a pedestrian, the town and district councils have reduced the decorations to tinsel and fairy lights on a few lamp-posts. “We wouldn’t want to get sued,” said spokesman Dean Dexter, “although I suppose then we would have an excuse to increase council tax and therefore provide a better service in our planned non-specific-use centre.”

Undeterred, lawyers are turning their attentions to environmental activists and the weather, in light of the current cold snap. Spokesman for Bedford-based moneyhungrylitigation.com Steve Stevens said, “It’s ridiculous that we are allowing these tree-hugging hippies with dirty long hair to get everyone reducing their carbon bootprint and carbon dioxide emissions. If it stays this cold people will be slipping over on the ice left right and centre – that’s very painful if you slip all three ways at the same time.”

Stevens is hoping to file a class action against “all crusties” and fictional character Mother Nature, to win compensation for anyone slipping on the ice. He encouraged people to run along uneven surfaces in the dark whenever the temperature drops below zero, and of course to call his firm before dialling 999.

When asked how he intended to ensure Mother Nature turned up in court, Stevens replied “I expect we’ll just blame someone vaguely related to the weather, like Michael Fish, or of course CERN – everyone knows they’re bloody sinister.”

“I’ve been wondering about this for a couple of years,” said Dakaat, 43, of Shakespeare Road. “I have analysed the weather patterns over the course of the last five years and it seems that all the worst weather happens while we are running to GMT time, instead of BST.”

Using a “rather complex Excel spreadsheet involving macros and v-lookups and stuff”, Dakaat was able to determine that the worst weather – wind, rain, snow, sleet and the suchlike – occurred between the last weekend of October, and the changeable date in Spring when the clocks go forward. “Just look at this week,” said the accountant. “The clocks went back on Sunday morning and since then it’s been freezing. It proves my point.”

Greenwich Mean Time is now largely a notional time measurement as official timekeeping is done using UTC. The Citizen pointed out to Dakaat that maybe his cause and effect was a little faulty, and that the “mean” in Greenwich Mean Time was to account for the differences caused by the Earth’s elliptical rotation around the sun – the same difference which means we gain a leap-day every fourth February. Dakaat responded that “Obviously the Citizen reporters have no idea what they’re talking about. I mean, in Paris they refer to Western European time as PMT, and they are certainly moody and hormonal all the fucking time.”

Cllr Derek Miles commented that, “St Neots Market Square Mean Time is about four minutes ahead of GMT anyway, so this is all by the by.” We contacted Expert Scientists on the matter but “they” refused to comment, and just mumbled something about Swatch Internet Time.