More mental East Coast weather - time to move to Spain

These are feverish times on the East Coast. Each day the temperatures rack up into three figures, mugging anyone brave enough to venture outdoors. Then at night the storms rumble up and stalk the neighborhood carrying an oblique threat of killer winds and tornadoes.

Thousands are without power, a handful have died and a major hurricane hasn't even arrived yet. On occasions it's hard to know why so many Europeans made the exodus to this wild and savage land. Perhaps had they had an apocalyptic  vision of standing for three quarters of an hour in a sweaty and sagging line at Wal-Mart they would have concluded: "Sod it. Religious persecution isn't so bad."

These days are like Russian roulette. If you pick up the kids at the wrong time, as I did last week when I decided to take Blackberry pictures of the storm instead of beating it, you end up running through deep puddles with psychotic hail crashing into your skull.

In saying all this the summer weather in Britain isn't so inspiring either. Weeks of rain that have led to flooding and cool temperatures have left Brits feeling cheated out of summer. Given that grumbling about the weather is a British pastime, the conditions have given Brits something to cheerfully moan about all summer.

The answer to all of this is surely to relocate to Spain where the food's fantastic, the people are vivacious and good looking, the football team is is doing more winning than Charlie Sheen and the weather is great. Indeed this was the British dream for so long, with the unfortunate consequence that there are some parts of Spain that are full of pasty people with dubious pasts in Blighty who are lapping up the grease on the full English breakfasts at the many British owned establishments on the waterfront.

The word is "ex-pats" which always makes me think of the film White Mischief  about rich Brits misbehaving in Kenya.

The downside of Spain is the economy has tanked and, like almost everywhere else in Europe, it's being bailed out by Germany.

But if that means crazy Brits are no longer paying millions for ruins in Andalucia  and polluting the place with their English breakfast grease, it's not all bad.