Water Sports

I got monumentally soaked this morning on the ride in to work.  The weather has taken a sneaky turn for the worse over the last few days.  When I left the house it was grey and unpleasant-looking, but basically dry.  A mile into the commute and the heavens opened.

In fairness it's vee rare to get dumped on like this while riding to work.  People always ask "What do you do when it rains?" This question is predicated on the wrong-headed assumption that it pisses down 50% of the time in London.  Fact is, it doesn't.  It rains very infrequently, and when it does, it's in short bursts.  So the chances of catching the deluge full in the face on one or both legs of a 40 commute are slight.

Despite my years of empirical evidence as too the dryness of the region I live in, I, like many Londoners, find it amazing when hosepipe bans are announced.  The received "wisdom" among Londoners at times like this is that any shortage of fluid in the taps is due exclusively to leaky pipework that Thames Water should have fixed by now, and not to the climate being fcuked.  People who labour under this misapprehension get, understandably but incorrectly, hacked-off when these strictures are announced.  Some belligerent cockneys (yes, there are a few) even refuse to kowtow until the water companies crack and undertake the remedial works.  They demonstrate their ire at monopoly capitalism like this by washing their cars as frequently as those of us closer to the middle of the sanity bell curve brush our teeth.

I think the primary cause of this incredulity is the fact that it's so cloudy in the south east.  Drought areas at least benefit from unbroken azure skies and glorious sunshine, don't they?  That's the quid pro quo for not being able to raise geraniums.  It seems unfair and impossible that we who suffer so much light pollution from a low grey cloud base should also be denied the opportunity to splash about a bit if so inclined.

What were our geography teachers talking about when we were kids?  They insisted that cumulo-nimbus clouds held rain.  Not the ones that reach us, it seems.  They're shit, like old teabags.

Doesn't seen fair somehow.