As thought, the month of August was the wettest / coolest in England in somewhere around 20 years, but things have not been as dire here as Britta recounts. My tomatoes, however, are also not ripening, and are splitting and suffering from blight, as are Britta's. Towards the end of last week (Thurs - Fri) they were saying we would have another blast of summer, but that didn't happen! We had a mostly dry weekend, and the sun came out yesterday afternoon, but today is another cool day of steady drizzle.
A couple years ago, when we had had a drought, there was talk here of schemes such as Darryl mentioned, to get water somehow from the North West to the South East, but nobody was able to come up with any practical scheme.
As for Gene's toilets in the back yard, hmm, I hope it doesn't come to that. In times of water scarcity, we are told to use grey water (from having washed the dishes, for example) in a bowl to flush the toilet, and I think some people may have diverted the waste pipe from their washing machines to somehow flush the toilets. At my house, we try and remember to use the dishwater to water our potted plants.
We are wondering what sort of winter we'll have - as Britta describes, that is our "wet" season but last winter was very wet indeed, with this part of Southern England receiving 225% the normal amount of rain.
To be continued as the months pass...