It has rained constantly...

... it seems for the past two or three weeks. Certainly it was raining on the Monday I went over to the UK, and it continued until the Thursday morning that Jag wrote about, which I spent in Whipps Cross Hospital waiting for my Mum to be treated for acting her shoe size and not her age. More about that another time. But it rained on the Friday as we left to walk to the Underground Station to get the Central Line tube into central London and Kings Cross/St Pancras. It rained as we caught the 11 0'clock Derby train that would deposit us at Luton Parkway and continued while we jerked along in the shuttle bus making pointless stops to the Luton departure terminal. It may have stopped while we wandered around the shopping mall that is Luton Airport, but it chucked it down as we walked to the aircraft.

It rained in the clouds. Above the clouds it rained some more by virtue of the higher level above.


As we diverted to Lyon the pilot told us to expect rain and then we started our long slow descent down into rain-heavy clouds, where it continued to fall as we sat immobile on the tarmac. Ninety minutes later we turned to takeoff and the taxi-ing lights of receding aircraft diffused in the droplets clinging to the windows before the speed of lift off turned them to thin streaks then nothing.

Eventual arrival into Geneva welcomed us with rain, and it hit and spattered the train windows as we hurried towards Lausanne. The streets shiny wet in the early evening low light as the sun made an attempt to burn through the thick Europe wide cloud base. Even when it wasn't raining it was very damp... http://youtube.com/watch?v=cRMsvfrg2UE&feature=related in an Olthwaite like way.

The next boat bound from Ouchy to Evian-les-Bains would not be for another hour, so we sat at a street side café, shielding our Cardinals from the dripping clouds.

Like Hitchcock's Birds the rain hit beat beak like onto the windows of the boat as it crossed the lake and as it fell heavier still Mrs Pondlife waited in the Caytrois to carry us up the mountain side to our home.

Nine days later and the rain has stopped. Roses are rotting on their branches. Petunias are dripping colour and perfume from flowers is negligible to all but the more sensitive of noses but the rivers and down hill streams bubble with fury over the tumbling stones.

So much for flaming June.

And I still have so much gardening yet to do.