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January 21, 2008
It's raining
Maybe it’s something to do with being on an island. Maybe it’s because we had the bad habit of planting our flag on the shores of distant lands where things were different. Maybe it’s our fear of silence.
Whatever the reason, we in this country are wont to talk about the weather. Incessantly. It’s either too hot or too cold or too wet or too dry. We get through superlatives like a grammar crammer trying to get a thick pupil through matriculation.
Your present interlocutor tries not to talk about the weather. Preferring to find something more interesting to yak about. Which I have to say is not that difficult.
However today I shall make an exception.
It’s raining. It’s not just raining, it’s really raining, there is water falling out of the sky, full and heavy from soaking grey clouds. It’s been raining like this for a while. It’s fantastic. I love it when weather doesn’t fuck about, but just gets on with it.
I went into town. I dismissed the idea of my bicycle on the grounds that I would have to concentrate on things other than the all encompassing wetness. The van would be ridiculous, there’d be windscreen wipers and condensation and spray and poor visibility and road closures and diversions and gridlock. So I walked.
If you stood in the shower with someone on a step ladder conveniently adding volume with a watering can and someone else obliging with regular buckets of water flung horizontally at you, you’d be fast approaching the conditions I experienced. It was invigorating.
The tarmac was awash, water from passing buses swoshed up in sheets across my path, rivers ran in the gutters and streams filled small lakes on the pavements. It was as if an angry god was punishing his wayward children.
the river finds a new route
The water falling from the sky was joined by gushing spouts issuing forth from flooded guttering like tropical waterfalls. Everywhere was water and wet and splashy.
update:14:00 Policemen have been posted all the bridges to report the water levels in the swollentobursting river, and the sun has come out to help the photographers [even angry gods know a good media opportunity when they create one].
Posted by john at January 21, 2008 01:35 PM
Comments
It isn't raining today, Tuesday. It's just kind of dull and greyish. Just proving I'm British and can talk about the weather even when there's not much weather to talk about.
Posted by: Daphne at January 22, 2008 05:38 PM