Cumulo Irritatum.

It is 9:27am, and the heavens have opened, sending freezing sheets of hydrogen and oxygen molecules down to us.

It is 9:27am, and it has been raining for 3 days.

Don't get me wrong, I like the rain; I like looking at it, seeing it strike the ground at a furious velocity. I find watching the murky figures that trudge about in it, heads downcast, endlessly fascinating. There is also something that appeals to me about the immense randomness of billions of objects that constantly alter their shapes, impacting each other, merging, splitting, crashing about and all the while plummeting to the ground.

What I dislike is being out in it. To retain any semblance of warmth, I have to don:

-A Trench Coat

-A pair of Leather Gloves (just wearing these makes me feel so creepy I have to hide them by shoving my hands in my pockets; but if you're wearing a trench coat, that's somehow worse...)

-A Scarf (This is truly an accessory for the mentally deranged. I mean, this is an item of clothing that actively TRIES to strangle you as you're wearing it!)

- My poor, beloved trilby, which ends up defeated, slumped over my head like a depressed felt haddock.

If I close my eyes really tight, I can imagine I'm a sleuth from a bygone era, pacing the streets in search of adventure...though the feeling walking in the rain produces is usually more akin to being a soldier with trench foot (though at least I've got a dead rat dinner to look forward to.)

If, by some miracle of architecture and parenting, you have never encountered this phenomenon of 'Rain', I suggest you pay a visit to your nearest bus stop.

A bus shelter in a raging rainstorm is alone in the universe as being a quintessentially miserable location. A piece of mass-produced metal that must have been commitee-designed simply to incorporate this many bad ideas. In a miricle of engineering, the only part of the roof that keeps water out is the centre, affording dryness only to those prepared to stand surrounded by shivering, dog-faced people. State of the art non-functioning lights act as small conduits, funneling rainwater onto a lucky few. Brand-new perspex windows with holes kicked in them by highly-trained experts,are strategically positioned at face and genital level for maximum discomfort.

But surely there must be some silver lining to this misery shared between people. A chance for conversation, maybe friendship to be struck up; some gallows camraderie?

People huddle underneath the shelter through an unconscious atavistic instinct to share body heat, but are repulsed by each other. So we end up standing, deperately trying not to make eye contact, close, but divided, like a little pack of grey, damp sausages.

And that was my week.