EVERY morning at this time of year, I step outside my front door and shudder at the icy blast that greets me and then I marvel at the colourful beauty in front of me.

A few years ago, I adopted a narrow strip of overgrown and overhung verge opposite , and spent two summers digging out a thick matting of criss-crossing bindweed roots.

Then I was left with an empty bed into which I threw some cheap primulas. Some perished, rotting away under the soggy carpet of leaves that smothers them every autumn, but several pulled through. Now they are big and strong, and I have pockets of vibrant colour all along the verge, despite whatever the weather and supermarket delivery lorries can throw at them.

My wife has more sophisticated horticultural skills, and sniffily refers to my “council groundsman” plantings.

My primulas – the first flowers of spring – come in all colours, but the true English Primrose is pale yellow. Every spring for 20 years, Queen Victoria sent her favourite Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, a posy of primroses plucked from her gardens at either Windsor Castle or Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

When Disraeli died on April 19, 1881, she sent two posies of primroses for his coffin and a note: “His favourite flowers.”

Whether this was true or not didn’t matter. If the Queen said it was so, then it was, and on the next April 19, Disraeli’s supporters wore primroses in their buttonholes.

He is said to have been the first to identify the “working class Tory” and in 1883, the Primrose League was formed to promote Disraeli’s values. In the spring of 1886, the first primrose meetings – or habitations – were held in Northallerton, Darlington and Richmond, and Lord Barnard soon threw open his castle grounds to attract Teesdale voters. By 1891, there were one million league members – even Reeth had more than 200 – and it was the largest political movement of the 19th Century, knocking Mr Corbyn’s Labour Party into a cocked hat.

On Primrose Day – April 19 – all Primrose League members wore primroses in their buttonholes, hats, even in their girdles.

The League folded in 2004, and now historians wonder whether Victoria was really referring on her funeral note to the flowers being her beloved Prince Albert’s favourite. But there’s no misunderstanding outside my house where every day is Primrose Day.

A MODERN joy is the junk that constantly fills up your inbox. As I write, an email entitled “Suffering from tight, constricting socks?” has just arrived.

However, I was interested in some unsolicited information sent by Freeflush, makers of rainwater harvesting systems, which has analysed MetOffice statistics from 1981 to 2015 to produce a rainfall league table.

Wettest city is Cardiff, with 1,152mm of rain a year falling on 149 days a year. Driest is London with 557mm on 109 days.

But Leeds is 8th in the table with 1,024mm on 152 days a year. Yet York, which is just 25 miles east, is 52nd with 626mm on 117 days. Ripon is 51st, and Durham is 49th with 651mm on 122 days. Newcastle and Sunderland are 58th and 59th with 597mm on 110 days.

So York clearly shares its climate with the North-East, leaving Leeds almost permanently under a grey cloud.