Alex James: British weather can be a hell of a ride Rain was playing at the windows. I was terrified, couldn't sleep. When 4am came I had to put on the headphones and knock myself out with a YouTube tutorial on one of the great unsolved problems of mathematics. The Riemann hypothesis never fails. I'd promised the builders a colossal spree if we could get the biomass boiler going before Christmas. I never thought we'd pull it off, but on the very last working day of the year we fired her up for the first time. I declared a victory. We had jerk chicken in the caravan and then hit every pub, hotel - and one or two houses - in the village. The last thing I can remember is standing on a table in the British Legion playing air sax to that great hymn to the pastoral dream, Baker Street. It was the perfect finale to 2013. But 2014 was starting badly. The rain was causing serious problems. The boiler worked but we hadn't completely finished the enclosure or the storm drains. The boiler itself is bombproof, but all the new associated electrical circuits and heat exchangers aren't and the housing was rapidly filling up with water. We'd done our best with tarpaulin - a farmer's best friend - but water was coming in from all directions. So I was up and ready for the builders. For a fortnight, the yard had been ghostly silent. The sound of hammers banging is the heartbeat of the farm. It's always there, with the birdsong and the breeze. The wind was howling and it was raining harder than ever as the site sprang back to life. Diggers rallied and tin sheeting was scrambled as the heating engineers fiddled. The boiler fired up again, first time, at the very moment the sun made an unexpected guest-star appearance. Like all farmers, I've hitched my wagon to the weather. Sometimes it's a hell of a ride.