It sounds so enticing, doesn’t it? “April showers”, a light sprinkling of warm rain on a beautiful spring day, perhaps taking shelter for a few minutes under a tree while it clears before continuing on with whatever you were doing.
Sadly it’s still March and this isn’t a shower, it’s rain. It’s cold, it’s wet and it’s miserable. One wonders if April will
live up to the dream given it’s less than 24 hours away. I suspect not.
I had to drive into work yesterday, something I dislike doing intensely. Despite having passed my test nearly 2 years ago I still get nervous driving by myself (plonking someone else in the passenger seat, for some reason, allays many of these nerves) and having to do rush hour traffic and roadworks just exacerbates that.
Driving would be much easier, and I think most people would agree with me here, without other people on the roads. This isn’t going to happen but some people deserve special ire.
Cyclists are a pet hate, either forcing me into the Death Lane (oncoming lane), forcing me and the involving traffic to get much closer and/or forcing me to slow right down. In rush hour traffic I often have to overtake the same cyclist several times and that just makes it worse. Then there’s the ones that think they can out accelerate me at the lights so stay in the middle of the road frantically peddling away. Sorry to break it to them but, despite having a small engine, I can pull away much faster so just get out of the sodding way!
Then there’s people working in the roads with their closed roads, contraflows, traffic lights, queues and stop start traffic. Add the last category of people, who we will charitably call Tossers, who drive right up your arse and you’ve got me, on a hill having to do 20 odd hill starts with no room to roll because I’ll hit the wanker behind. It’s little wonder I stall.
The Tosser category includes a great many people and covers a great many sins. These include, but are not limited to: driving at me in order to force their way into traffic; not even thanking me when I let them in (not that I had any choice); not dimming headlights; overtaking recklessly because we don’t want to do 90 on a 60 road; driving up my arse; driving too slowly; putting fog lights on when it’s so clear you can see Holland from the beach; not indicating; adopting the manoeuvre, signal, mirror school of driving; incorrectly indicating; being unable to maintain a constant speed on a fast and clear road; being so unable to maintain a constant speed that you’re varying it by over 20mph; not driving on your side of the road on narrow roads.
That said it is very cold, wet and windy today and my walk into work may have me hankering for the warmth of the car.
I have, or rather had, two umbrellas. A large, automatic, wind proof, keeps me and the bag dry even in a downpour job and a little-un that lives in my bag. The large one is a bit unwieldy when strapped to my bag for carrying so I tend to only bring it if I know it’s going to rain. After all, if I get caught short there’s the small backup. That said the small one can’t really cope with wind… or heavy rain… or, it would seem, opening.
Yesterday as I walked home improperly attired for the freezing rain and biting winds I decided that deploying the small brolly (the large one having been left at home) might help mitigate some of the negative aspects of the weather. It had other ideas. I fished it out of the bag, pressed the latch to allow me to open it and promptly pulled the handle from the brolly. Since being armed with two halves of a brolly was counterproductive I attempted to reattach the handle, an endeavour that I was successful in but that would ultimately prove to be futile. The damage was now done and the handle would easily disengage from the brolly with the slightest gust of bitterly cold wind.
Faced with little other option I did what any hardened London commuter would do: I looked for a taxi. It’s unfortunate that, pretty though. It is, my route into work yields, on average, 0 taxis on any given day. Instead I thrust my hands in my hoodie pocket, hunkered down and set a new world speed walking record from work to the station.
Today I have the big brolly. And a coat. The little brolly is in the bin and I shall be taking no chances against this winter.
It’s too wet, windy a grey to blog today and even though I have my big brolly it’s hard to walk, type, fight the wind and keep the phone dry. I am aware that by telling you this I have in fact blogged and, therefore, contradicted myself but that’s my parogative. There is a certain irony that I’m listening to Queen The Show Must Go On while I write this. So yes, the show has gone on, but it’s actually a show about how the show is cancelled. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
A month or two ago we had rain of biblical proportions which managed to soak me entirely despite having a brolly. I don’t seem to have blogged about it though which is remiss of me. I certainly bitched about it on Facebook a lot. Anyway, the upshot is that these days I take my bigger umbrella if it looks like more than showers. So consider this morning:
Me: Good morning rain!
Rain: Good morning Dom.
Me: You’re going to piss it down aren’t you?
Rain: *looks innocent*
Me: Well I don’t trust you so I’m taking my big umbrella!
Rain: As you wish.
Me: Yup, see, lovely and dry!
Rain: You sure about that?
[Cue more biblical rain that hits the ground so hard it then bounces up and soaks you from the thighs down.]
Me: Bastard!
Rain: You’re welcome.
Thankfully the point was proved on the quick 250m dash to the station so I was able to go from soaked to damp by the time I arrived in Norwich and was not made any damper on my walk to work. Poor old Zozo was out in it all day though 
So there is tiny flaw in the whole blogging while walking to and from work, namely the small problem of rain. That said, there have been very few days where it’s been raining on both walks but this is the UK and having crappy, drizzly days where it doesn’t let up isn’t unheard of. If it is raining you’ll just have to go find something else to do 