Summer in the City: Deluge

"Summer?" I hear you shout, incredulously. Well, actually, I don't, given that none of my regular readers (all three of them) live remotely near me, but I imagine that if they did, I would, because really, the summer has rather passed us by. After a few weeks of sun earlier in June and July, autumn has set in early, and it looks as though Summer in the City is doomed to disappear into the ever-increasing list of Small And Incomplete Blog Features. So let's make the most of it, as I present...


...oh. More rain. Specifically, this is part of the view from my window in Enfield, taken as the heaviest rain that I've seen for some time threw its weight against the town.

In what must be a kind of British self-defence mechanism, I do quite like the rain. If I'm indoors, and it's warm, and ideally if I have tea and dark chocolate digestive biscuits (for any American readers: you can buy them on Amazon, and you must do so right this second), then I find the sound of heavy rain really soothing. Just something about not having to be outside in it, I think. And then you can go out and sample that damp and earthy smell, and play dodge-the-slug all down the street. OK, so that's not quite such a good part.

In this case, I was at my computer, and saw a flash of lightning illuminate the wall of my room. I got to the window just in time to see a proper Hollywood rain storm – you know the kind. A roll of thunder, a slight hiss as the rain begins, and then within seconds it's bucketing down. I practically expected Gene Kelly to start soft-shoeing his way down the street outside.

About half an hour later, it was over, with just a few spots of drizzle attempting to keep the mood up. London has missed the worst of the recent "extreme" weather, but it seems that we now have to head onward into the rapidly cooling and dampening autumn. Time to batten down the hatches and put the kettle on.