… but only if you really want to

There is a certain irony in contrasting the screaming headlines of today’s papers threatening summer long droughts, with the pissing rain which characterised my ride home through this evening. The doomsayers predict a scorched earth policy for previously verdant lawns, golf courses bunkered with sandy fairways and lifeless car washes. So not all bad then. In fact, I’m struggling to see the downside.

Not that it’s actually going to happen. Two reasons; one surely no political oversight body can ever reconcile the Water Companies’ inability to prevent a quarter of their precious aqua dripping through leaky pipes and this is some way being the consumers problem; secondly, it’s being chucking it down for weeks. Woops, for a second there I failed to make the link between faceless corporations and their greedy shareholders versus the incompetent hoard who are alleged to police them. But it has been raining, I have evidence of that.

I should have been fine. I have a layering system honed by a hundred commutes. There’s just one problem with it; it’s rubbish. Below decks, my shoes are soaked, lemmings are cheerfully practising all manner of watersports in my socks and I’m suffering from an unpleasant groinal moistness.

Above decks I am essentially a boil in the bag. While the emergency waterproof is adequate at keeping the water out, it is unfortunately bloody marvellous at keeping the water in. My first two layers wick sweat out in a superbly technical manner “ but once this moisture makes a break for freedom, it’s faced with the impermeable barrier of the cheap waterproof. I’m not getting rained on, I’m getting rained in. On removing this horrid garment, everything from the wedding tackle upwards is stained in stale sweat and there’s a generated head of steam that could make me good money if plugged into the grid. Still it was cheap and packs down to almost nothing which exactly mirrors how much use it actually was.

My feet would be dry if I didn’t have water on the brain by naively following the dogma of my fellow commuters. There is a childlike ideology that it never rains in London except briefly in the winter. Well all I can say is I’m glad it bloody does otherwise the suspicious gritty patch on my arse could only be passed off as an unfortunate and unplanned bowel movement.

As moisture began to permeate my every pore, I attempted to distract myself by musing if both the pressure and volume of this personalised enema was better or worse when comparing tyre types. Surely a knobbly would chuck up more but, hang on, maybe a faster rolling slick could make up the volume through greater revolutions.

This idle speculation kept me going until gaining the sanctuary of a warm pub where my friend enquired what do you need a waterproof for you poof, it’s never rains properly in London”.

I think he’s probably right.