Rain

 

It's raining.  Really.  Genuine tipping-it-down, puddles-to-the-ankles, hellhound-outraging rain.  In the last week or so we've had nearly half an inch, mostly in a couple of fairly spectacular meteorological displays of bad temper*, but while I'm sure everybody's gardens appreciated anything they could get, it's barely laid the dust, and anywhere that isn't a pampered private garden and heavily mulched I suspect it ran straight off again.  I was still watering my pots yesterday (and complaining).  Today . . . today it's raining.

            I've forgotten how to cope with rain.  I got rain on my glasses on the way to the tower this morning.**  I was wearing my leather jacket, and I hadn't zipped it up.  I was also wearing ancient All Stars with holes in the bottoms***.  What Is This Wet Stuff Falling From the Sky?  What do I do?

            And the hellhounds . . . the hellhounds are not the least impressed by the interruption of the drought.  They want a nice hurtle, like the nice hurtles they've been getting pretty well uninterrupted for the last three or four months.  I had to drag† them out on our shortest round—and these guys are a lot chattier than the whippets were.  Rowan could do a fair peevish grumble, but when Darkness doesn't approve of current events by golly you hear about it.  At least neither of them belongs to the 'I'm not gonna crap till the weather improves' school of dog perversity.  We're really all still in shock.  Wet!  Stuff!  Falling!  From!  The!  Sky!  But if it's still doing this tomorrow we'll have to go out for a proper hurtle regardless or we'll all be dangling from the chandelier with restless cooped-up-ness.††

            But, you know . . . rain.  Rain is good.  It's been raining hard and steadily enough today that it should be getting into the ground.            

* * *

* Not at all popular with someone who has windows permanently open for the easy egress of bats.  And the bat update is . . . I went so far as to risk closing the bathroom window a couple of nights ago when the rain was coming in sideways.  And . . . there have been no repercussions that I'm aware of.^  Atlas managed to come in a third day again last week and finished sealing up (I hope) both the kitchen and the linen cupboard^^ . . . but he's coming back this week to do the sitting room as well.  Despite the apparent lack of bats at the moment, the sitting room beams are in the exact same state as the kitchen beams were, and I predict that Hermione and Eadgyth will become cranky one day soon and start looking for alternate exits as their old ones have disappeared.  Once you introduce a bat to a chandelier she's not going to give it up again easily.  I did wonder, if Ajlr's resident eco warrior is correct about Bat Cottage having more summer tenants this year than usual because of the dry weather, if perhaps they'd disperse again if it rains hard enough.  But I suspect it's too late this year—by mid-June the first babies are already born, and I don't think anyone's going to move once there are babies involved.  Also you may remember—or you bat people already knew this—that the point about nurseries is there need to be enough babies to huddle together to stay warm while the mums are out hunting.  We're also having an unusually cold season so some of the smaller nurseries maybe have been abandoned this year for that reason as well as the drought.  I really should not have allowed myself to be pleased at the Largest Bat Nursery in Hampshire cognomen last year.^^^  This is the kind of thing fate latches onto, laughing maniacally. 

            Anyway.  I haven't seen a bat in nearly a week, although I heard wings once or twice early on.  But the attic window is still open.  And it will stay open till at least one night after Atlas finishes stoppering up the sitting room.  Bats are, you know, mammals.  They have brains.  You're not going to teach a wasp or a bee where the open window is.  But I would expect Hermione or Eadgyth, if they manage to find a new way through in the sitting room#, to be able to find the emergency exit.  I can stand wet carpet for a few more days if I have to. 

^ Insert nervous ritual gestures here. 

^^ And while the attractiveness rating of the inside of my linen cupboard does not greatly concern me the kitchen is going to require some cosmetic rehabilitation.  Which probably means the sitting room will too. 

^^^ As a result of a series of frivolous emails with a friend and the promiscuous following of links I found this site:  http://www.habitataid.co.uk/   I'm a little tempted to contact them and ask what they might recommend for a very small garden that supports an awful lot of bats.  For all I know the Chiropteran population explosion started when Bat Cottage's new owner started stuffing rose-bushes in every available gap.  Pssst—all the aphids you can eat—pass it on. 

# aaaaaaaaugh  

** This is the second time Niall has managed to be away for a long weekend over an Old Eden practise night.  I'm having to run three bell-meets in four days.  This is absolutely not allowed in the Care and Handling of Fragile Deputy Ringing Masters Who Don't Know What the Frell They're Doing.^   We pretty much got through Friday practise by the skin of our teeth.  Or the sleight of our hands.  We only just got through service ring this morning—we were piteously ringing minimus (four bells) when Edward, bless him, showed up^^—but it's looking bad for Old Eden tomorrow.  I've been having top-level consultations with Colin.  We are hoping that a battlefield alliance of our two sadly depleted forces^^^ may result in one bell practise somewhere.

            Meanwhile those of you who follow me on Twitter already know that I fell downstairs yesterday morning (ow) and this morning managed to impale my forehead on the sharp steely# corner of Wolfgang's driver's side door (double ow).##   Both my left shoulder and most of my left ribs were testy this morning### and service ring was while both eyelids still opened fully.  Colin's nasty little garage flower-pot ring never looked so good as it does to me tonight in prospect of wrestling those possessed-by-demons clankers tomorrow night at Old Eden. 

^ I could have a word with Penelope, who is responsible for forcing Niall to go on holidays in the first place.  Unfortunately she'd laugh.  

^^ There are four-bell towers and ringers who love kinky four-bell methods.  But most of us feel that real method ringing begins with five working bells:  doubles.  Doubles, however, is supposed to include a sixth, tenor-behind, bell.  The drawback to this morning is that the other four were all good ringers which meant we rang Stedman without a tenor behind.  I know I tell you that this happens now and again.  It's still terrifying. 

I'm ringing master in name only, you realise.  All these people outrank me.  If I hadn't called for Stedman, they'd merely have mutinied.

^^^ Yes.  I've been writing PEG II for quite a lot of the afternoon and it's not looking good for our gang.  

# Modern cars are made of plastic.  Until you impale yourself on a corner of one of them. 

## The parking-space-side flowerbed is perhaps a trifle richly planted.  This includes . . . uh . . . several roses.  One of them is Ayrshire Splendens, which Peter Beales http://www.classicroses.co.uk/products/roses/ayrshire-splendens/

describes as a 15-footer but she was 20-plus at the old house and still in world-conquering mode when we left.  She's supposed to be climbing the fence and launching herself into my (*&^%$£"!!!! neighbour's frelling forest here in New Arcadia.  But roses don't always do what you want them to.   She's got a couple of thorny tendrils out investigating that empty area on the side opposite the forest.  Because I am too stupid to live I was ducking out of her way at the same moment that I was opening the car door. . . .

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. 

### I would fall left-side-down.  Left is Chaos' side in the hellhound hierarchy.

*** I wear them till I can no longer tie them on, okay?  And I've been known to use duct tape to delay the day. 

† Ow.  Oh, well, Chaos may be more chaotic but he weighs noticeably less in all-four-feet-braced posture. 

†† With the bats.