Monsoon Mayhem...

...There is something especially satisfying in standing at the door of one's study that leads onto the garden watching and indeed listening as ferocious rain simply crashes down as if imitating a Somerset Maughan monsoon. Pleasure is enhanced from the very sense that such a tumultuous downpouring is almost too much slightly indecent to be true English rain. A dangerous and alluring foreign import that popped over, say, from Borneo's darkest, vibrant jungle wakening our small spirits to the proper furore of nature. Thunderous clashes too and sky-cleaving lightning. Darkness at noon sort of territory. Now that is weather to talk about.

The chemist and the baker are mildly flooded even. This news reaches me when H telephones to ensure I have remembered to close the conservatory windows, my affirmation to that point only shortly proceeding my doing of it.

Pipe in hand and from the dry fastness of the doorway one reflects on the mild irony of having spent much of the previous evening watering the precious [see previous] front lawn. One purrs in the knowledge that hedge-trimming will have to wait once more. One almost basks in the very sodden wetness of it all.

All then is good, until H returns to observe sharply that the rooflight on the jalopy is open as is the back window. Ah! How swiftly falls the man and the spirit. The seats are soaked and the boot some five inches under water.

On the whole then Borneo is better kept for the Borneans.