Washout

Typically today we get the sunshine and dry weather. Even the towering plumes of benign Cumulus Castellanus languidly rolling across the sky seemed to be taking a day off.

Yesterday was a different matter altogether with a heavy dun blanket of cloud stretched out over the city, even more threatening than the livid bruise that shrouded New York when I stepped out of JFK on the way to a photoshoot years ago. Then it had brought snow. Here the cloud just ripped open and water poured through the rent.

Virtually everyone had cried off yesterday’s scheduled blogger drink. Work Buddy and I had been wondering if it was worth making the effort. Neither of us was particularly enthused by the location, which was a storefront pub close to the heart of London’s Tourist Zone. Nice if you want to wait ages for service and get bashed amongst the out-of-towners, most of whom didn’t think to remove the rucksacks strapped to their backs.

The problem with horrendous weather conditions in London, if not the whole of the British Isles, is that public transportation immediately curls up and goes limp the moment the going gets tough. I had emailed the one person we had wanted to see and came to the decision that if looked likely that we’d be trapped in Central London with only one bendy bus and a trio of the rickshaw bicycles to get out on, it wasn’t worth the effort. Come Saturday morning, with the mainline trains already suspect, we all decided to give it a miss.

Not long after the Old Dear called to regale me with life in Devonshire. The river estuary at the far end of the beach would always flood during heavy rains and put the town’s cricket ground under water, but other than that they endured.

The main problem was that a neighbour’s cat had almost got its claws into the pheasant that comes into the garden to be fed, that and the fact that the Old Man had agreed to host a barbecue for the local Bowls & Croquet Club this coming Wednesday. I guess we all have our cross to bear.