I say unto thee..

These days, with the rain competing for a place in the Guinness book of records under the 'biblical deluges' section, the weather forecast becomes a bit like a Party conference; unremitting misery punctuated by the occasional spell of hope. Moses must have felt a bit like this when he organised the first package holiday for the twelve tribes after their prolonged stay in Egypt was cut short. There's more than a few similarities, too; certainly, at times, it feels as though the Red sea is closing over us. And for those trying to pursue all those traditional summer pastimes, such as painting the outside of the house or launching that long-awaited campaign to get the Leylandii under some semblance of control it's often debatable whether plagues of locusts or frogs wouldn't just be that teenier bit more welcome than the constant, unremitting drizzle that constitutes a British summer.

Mind you, Moses also had a number of advantages. Having God as a tour guide can't be all bad, as it makes passport control pretty straightforward for a start, and getting the ten commandments was a nice trick, although it's long been argued that the translation was faulty, in that what Moses was actually doing was trying to cure a particularly bad run of constipation (And Moses took two tablets and it came to pass...).

The similarities with the typical family holiday continue, however, in that the tour organiser - usually dad - wasn't allowed to get into the final venue on a technicality, and just how many times has that happened, when you're desperately trying to find the kids who've sneaked away into some night club on the costa del lager?

It doesn't end there, of course, as the historical validity of the Exodus - as with so much in the Bible - has been questioned many times, a similar experience to Dad's when he's trying to convince everyone that they're on the right bus and heading for the right hotel. And when the family finally makes it to their destination, and collapse, bleary-eyed in a muddled heap on the hotel bed, the final words of doom and destruction are uttered: "Looks like it's going to be nice tomorrow..."