You won't believe this, but today it started raining sometime in the afternoon and it's still raining, even though it's nearly midnight. Raining... in London, I ask you... you couldn't make it up!
Now before you start calling the men in the white coats to take me away and lock me in a padded room somewhere, you must understand that this summer has been unusually hot and dry so far, with minimal rainfall. We have simply, therefore, become unaccustomed to its wet embrace and general dampening demeanour. I have not had to use - or even carry - an umbrella for ages. I vaguely remember some spots of rain a couple of weeks ago, but it was hardly significant; we may be seeing the effects of global warming or, considering the one summer previous to this one that was as hot was 1976, we may just be having a hot summer with little rainfall.
Having impressed you with my wonderful photographs of this green and pleasant land over the last couple of posts I must now explain that, in order to be green, this pleasant land must be watered, i.e. rained upon, at regular intervals so that nature can have its fill; there is no other way. But despite
most non-British people thinking that it does nothing but rain here, except when it's pea-soup foggy, this clearly isn't the case. In some years the lack of adequate rainfall is so pronounced that water consumption restrictions are introduced (the famous hosepipe bans) to stop people from consuming the scarce resource outsiders think of as inexhaustible.
Now let me also explain that rain is
a serious pain in the neck as far as I'm concerned because : (a) I hate umbrellas, (b) I don't much care for raincoats and (c) I hate having my movements restricted by the weather and/or getting soaked. Yet the loveliness of Nature at its verdant best is worth at least some of the inconvenience to my esteemed personage, and the site of a small fawn munching away within (yep, it's in one of the photographs) was just spellbinding.
Forgive my playful, humorous style on a subject (rainfall) that can be very important to sectors of the population, especially farmers who rely on the weather to rain or not to rain at certain times - often their livelihood depends on it. But I am not a farmer, just a silly inhabitant of the metropolis that is London and my interests on the subject are trivial, at least to others. Still, the rain has gone again for now, umbrellas have been put away again and my tan, such as it is and gained by walking around London with the sun shining, is developing apace albeit in the style known as lorry driver's tan. The clouds appear and disappear, even threaten a little bit, but in the end do nothing untoward.
Rain in London, ha-ha, you're 'avin' a laugh... It's a rarity, mate!
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