Here Comes The Rain Again...

I'm not going to launch iTunes and play the Eurythmics classic as I have had enough rain for one day. I'm starting to take it personally, actually.

This morning, I headed off to Taunton for a hairdressing appointment, a treat to myself after working long hours to get some projects finished. I was planning to have my hair colour changed after spending the summer and ensuing months a rather bright blonde. I suspect the blonde was an attempt to cheer myself up after the death of my father and the machinations of my mother and sister. Anyway, I had gone blonde, shocked a number of people and the chore of visiting the hairdresser every three weeks to have the roots done was more than I could bear. My hair grows at a rapid rate, which is great if you want to get it long quickly, but rather a nightmare if you are prone to sprouting dark roots within a week of the last dyeing.

As I opened the door to leave home this morning, the heavens opened. Granted, it had been raining all night and the wind howling so loudly that it woke me up, but there was a lull in the sound of gushing water in the lane beside our house that turns into a river without much encouragement. By the time I fell into the car in an unceremonious heap, I was soaked and my hair plastered to my face. Very elegant.

Sitting in the hairdressers, they were all cheery about how it had dried up (the moment I entered the building) and what a relief it was. Yes, that was certainly true. My hair graduated from Diana Dors to it's natural otter colour and I donned my coat to leave. Yes, it started raining again. Yippee.

I'd say I had scampered back to the car, but it was so damp that it was more of a rapid shambling limp and I pointed my trusty blue beast for my next appointment. I had arranged to collect some items, including a couple of strawberry plants from a kind lady on Freecycle. That was an interesting trip. I love my BMW to bits and have found the thought of trading her in hard, despite her age, for something else but tonight I decided I would - for a boat. The lady lived in the back of beyond... no, further. I drove up rivers that had once been roads, traversed puddles the size of duck ponds and eventually got there.

Returning home was even better. There is a road that lies low in the Somerset countryside and all the water from the surrounding hills washes down there. The road crosses water meadows and these have small, hump-backed bridges at intervals over the streams. In heavy rain, the space between the bridges turn into puddles. Deep puddles. This was my route home. There aren't that many roads around where I live, so it's not like I had a choice. Happily, there were two cars in front of me, far enough ahead that I could see if they succeeded in crossing the floods. It was school chucking-out time so the bridges were littered with gibbering women in 4x4s who could easily have passed through the water (had they had the brains to understand what they were driving). I went for it.

WoooHooo! My BWW made rather a splendid bow wave and she sailed majestically through, with a spray over the top of the hedgerow (and I was only in first gear and slipping the clutch like mad). I drove away, leaving the gibbering ones to the floods and came home.

Yup, I'm soaked all over again from the dash between car and house and the rayburn has gone out. I now look like a very plump otter again, though I don't have quite such a love of water at they do. I'm cold, damp and very grumpy and taking this all very personally. Would someone pass the gin please?