My head's in the clouds | BBC Radio Solent's Alun Newman

I was gripped by its manifesto and, like all strange addictions, the gateway drug was something small.

A lady by the name of Rachel Louise shared a picture on her Facebook feed when she spotted a cloud in the sky that looked like an image of the UK. The picture was great.

It was snapped up by online media and in a bid to have anything in the news that wasn’t terrifying it subsequently became an ‘...and finally’ style news story.

What was even better was that it did indeed look like our motherland.

I began to wonder how popular it was to see such an event and quickly found several groups hosting similar pictures.

There are websites called Clouds That Look Like Things and Amusing Planet.

It turns out that this is not an uncommon event at all.

In fact, there was a cloud dolphin spotted over West Sussex a while ago and a polar bear near Yeovil.

The mains powered drill in Kent was less convincing though.

The topless mermaid was offensive but there was no one to start litigation against so it was simply accepted.

In fact, a lot of people just pretended they couldn’t see it. The Cloud Appreciation Society is opposed to Blue Sky Thinking, it campaigns for people to understand this drifting meteorological wonder.

It calls for cloudy days to be celebrated as much as the gin-clear blue ones.

The campaign group also sends you a cloud of the day and a tutorial on different names, forms and types.

It struck me that as a family we focus, crave, and discuss the days that were fun, the holidays and the trips away.

They are the blue sky days, the special events.

There’s nothing wrong with these but they are few and far between.

More now than ever before.

However, we don’t place the same value on the more normal, the more mundane.

The meal together at the table, Saturday cleaning day, the walk to the shops to queue and get milk (queue and get anything).

For most of us, lockdown has felt like one big, long, cloudy day waiting for the blue sky.

It’s lasted much longer than I anticipated.

It has been a worldwide event that has forced even the most neurotic, must-do, can’t-sit-down, type of person to slow down.

We’ve walked more, achieved less.

I’m wondering, as we creep out of lockdown and tip-toe our way to a beer garden or slowly build up the courage to offer someone a hug, (while wearing a mask, visor and gelling hands) that we might become a nation that has a greater capacity to enjoy the clouds far more and wait for the blue sky a little bit less.

My daughter said to me that she felt the pandemic has brought us closer together as a family.

She, along with 60 per cent of young people surveyed (source: BiteBack 2030), hoped we could keep eating together and connecting on a regular basis.

Many others said this has been the first time they walked and been able to really watch spring change into summer.

Surely these are examples of a nation changing from wishing for the blue sky and enjoying the clouds?

The Cloud Appreciation Society ask their members to look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds!

No-one actually swims butterfly, do they?

At the point I write this Swim England is still campaigning to get swimming pools open.

It has published its guidance and is convinced that if we can fly, drink, shop, and go to the cinema, then we can definitely swim.

There is one element that I think may have gone too far though.

On its list of dos and don’t s the organisation has requested that when using the pool you refrain from swimming butterfly.

This may be a good moment to point out to Swim England that no ordinary human can pull off this stroke.

In fact, no adult has ever worked out exactly how it was invented .

As a dad I have attempted it. But like everyone else on earth you can only do the butterfly-flinging arms three times before you're exhausted, think you’re going to vomit, and have to apologise to every other swimmer for swallowing half the pool.

At no point in any rescue attempt, any episode of Baywatch, or any shark movie, has someone used butterfly as the stroke of choice.

Front crawl to look cool. Breaststroke for pottering.

I think it was invented because it was the only stroke a particularly wealthy child could do and in turn, their parents insisted it was declared an official stroke and subsequently guaranteeing Olympic Gold.

Stand down Swim England we’ll keep splashing to a minimum.

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