Wet, Wet, Wet

Oh woe, oh misery. There we were applauding the weather for greeting the new season with its hat at a jaunty angle, a cheery whistle and a distinct spring in its step, and then what does it go and do? It reaches again for its mufflers and sweater, moans into a warming mug and then shuffles along the chill streets avoiding swiftly moving taxis playing "splashy-splashy". If it's the season, it must be pissing down. And so it has been. Small and rather cold comfort it will be to the tourist, but the reservoirs needed the water, and so they have had it - in great container loads.

Thursday was a distinctly iffy day and Thursday turned into Friday and the weekend. A wet weekend in Mallorca. In May. Even more cold comfort comes in the knowledge of high-summer heat in England. Woe, woe and thrice woe.

I have never bought this oh it doesn't matter if the weather's crap on holiday, we'll have a good time anyway line of argument. Why not just admit to misery? I would. And, more's to the point, how can you have a good time when it's lashing down here? Some family members, mainly the men, may find solace in several beverages at a local inn showing the dying moments of the Premier League season, but as for the rest? No beach, no pool, no excursions, no walking, no nothing, for there is nothing. If the weather decides to be malevolent and dump sufficient precipitation to match the floods of Noah, there's no point trying to justify that all is wonderful. It is not; it's rubbish. And then, when you phone home, and the neighbours are enjoying a barbecue on a balmy English evening while you are shivering and wet and terminally hacked off, all you want to do is to remind yourself to insert that mobile into a part of the neighbour on your return. Because however much you say with as much of a laugh as you can muster - oh it doesn't matter, we're having a great time - you know you are not and that you hate your neighbour and his good weather and hate even more the fact that, once off the phone, that neighbour will have a damn good laugh at your expense. Ho, ho, ho, in Mallorca, when they could be getting sunstroke in Swindon. Woe, woe, and several more times woe. Best not to phone home and then pretend that the bad weather miraculously missed you, the only problem being ... how to explain the fact that, on return, you are less suntanned than when you left.


QUIZ
Yesterday's chain - Bryan Adams to "Everything I Do" to "Robin Hood" to Kevin Costner to "The Bodyguard", Whitney Houston and "I Will Always Love You". And how to get from Whitney to The Mothers of Invention. Yesterday's title - Deacon Blue, "Your Town".

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)