Tropical Downpour? Call Al Gore!
Surrey has been experiencing what Government scaremongers are pleased to call ‘an extreme weather event’, the rest of us call rain and I call ‘a f**king downpour’. You know that scene when Gene Kelley stands under that downspout during the wonderful ‘singing in the rain’ sequence from the eponymous film (gay test: worried your son likes musicals more than hunting? Show him ‘singing in the rain’ and ask him his opinion. If he rates it as anything less than ‘fantastic’, shoot him – better a poof than somebody with no taste, as my Uncle Janice used to say), it was just like that. Gutters overflowed and you could see the rain sheeting off the roof tiles.
We got about a weeks’ rain in ten minutes. The reaction to this is a useful measure of where you are on the civilization scale. If your thoughts run along the lines of ‘This will do the grazing in the lower paddock no end of good’, then essentially, you don’t have to worry. If you think ‘shit, that sounds like a mud slide – I wonder if my hut wall will hold it back?’ – then you should really look to moving to high ground and a first world country with an economy that’s not based on anything you put in a mug and stir.
Most of us probably fall somewhere in between (I was worried about my recently planted tomato plants on my allotment), but all of us are, I hope, agreed on one thing, getting caught in the rain leading to jumping about and grinning only happens in Hollywood films written, and acted, by people so stoned off their tits that the most common form of dampness they experience is when they pee themselves when high and don’t notice until they come to on the floor of their home if they are lucky or the cell they now share with ‘Bubba’ if they are not.
So while I can admire the power of nature, I’m of an age now where the sensation of wet clothing sticking to my body is like that moment when you brush up against a wet shower curtain and it sticks to you – but all over. That scene in the shower in Psycho – those screams were real, Hitch pushed a wet clammy shower curtain up against Janet Leigh again and again and again. The only good time for the heavens to open is when somebody suggests returning to the office after this lunchtime pint, or when the commentator says ‘England surely hoping that something happens here that will force the draw.’
We got about a weeks’ rain in ten minutes. The reaction to this is a useful measure of where you are on the civilization scale. If your thoughts run along the lines of ‘This will do the grazing in the lower paddock no end of good’, then essentially, you don’t have to worry. If you think ‘shit, that sounds like a mud slide – I wonder if my hut wall will hold it back?’ – then you should really look to moving to high ground and a first world country with an economy that’s not based on anything you put in a mug and stir.
Most of us probably fall somewhere in between (I was worried about my recently planted tomato plants on my allotment), but all of us are, I hope, agreed on one thing, getting caught in the rain leading to jumping about and grinning only happens in Hollywood films written, and acted, by people so stoned off their tits that the most common form of dampness they experience is when they pee themselves when high and don’t notice until they come to on the floor of their home if they are lucky or the cell they now share with ‘Bubba’ if they are not.
So while I can admire the power of nature, I’m of an age now where the sensation of wet clothing sticking to my body is like that moment when you brush up against a wet shower curtain and it sticks to you – but all over. That scene in the shower in Psycho – those screams were real, Hitch pushed a wet clammy shower curtain up against Janet Leigh again and again and again. The only good time for the heavens to open is when somebody suggests returning to the office after this lunchtime pint, or when the commentator says ‘England surely hoping that something happens here that will force the draw.’
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