I should have known better ...

I think there could be nothing more indicative of rip-off Britain, and which serves perfectly as the embodiment of the disappointment with which so many people live on this murky island, than the recent solar eclipse.
We'd heard about it for weeks. Solar eclipse on March 20.  Then, solar eclipse this Friday. Don't miss it, folks. It'll be decades till you may or may not see another one. Be there or be square.  The solar eclipse is coming. Solar eclipse! SOLAR ECLIPSE! Holy squishy squirrel shit, SOLAR ECLIPSE EVERYONE!
There's me thinking, when this week began, that since I usually stay up Friday mornings after work to get a little pre-weekend housecleaning done, then I can step outdoors at 9:36 a.m. to view the 85 percent eclipse and observe how dark it would get. Even though there have been other solar eclipses that occurred during the course my current 45-year lifespan, I had no chance to see them. This one I would not, could not, miss.
Ah, but yes. Leave it to nature.
I left work Friday morning at 6:35 a.m. Looked at the sheet of impenetrable steel-grey mylar covering the entire sky and thought, "This is not good." Fast forward three hours. It got a bit darker. But it was not possible to tell if that was due to the eclipse taking place behind the cloud cover or if it was darker storm clouds arriving. It looked like it does during the tense minute just before a thunderstorm.
Then I went to bed. Boo-yah!
At least I wasn't alone in my frustration and seething resentment of nimbostratus. Forty million others across the country could not see it either. As The Daily Telegraph's Sarah Knapton writes, "It was a very British eclipse". And how!
The real kick in the ass? It had been sunny for mornings on end. It has been the sunniest British winter since Methuselah was a young boy performing cartwheels in the desert sand. The morning when we really needed the sky to be clear? That would be a no-go, ladies and gentlemen.
Just goes to show, as every resident of this land knows, the necessity in taking any news that could indicate genuine excitement with a liberal dose of salt. That way,  at least the bitter taste in your mouth that you will be left with will not come as a surprise.