Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells………

That John, what a wordsmith, eh? Is there anything better than arriving back at a toastily-warm house after walking home from work on a dark autumnal night? Not going to work in the first place? Slackers, each and every one of you! I actually took the feature photograph on my way to work a couple of weeks ago. Not too shabby as a way to start the day, non?

Anyway, lovely as autumn is, I have been rained on walking home every day this week. And I mean rain, not drizzle. Why don’t you get an umbrella, I hear you ask? I have an umbrella; in fact the last time I checked I possess at least 4 of them. Problem is, I hate them so much I’d rather get wet. I hate the dripping, I hate their seemingly perennial dampness, I hate the wretched spokes that never seem to behave themselves. So, I get wet instead. Before you ridicule me, I share this disdain for brollies with no less a personage than Albert Einstein. There’s a great story of him leaving a lecture hall and walking out into pouring rain. One of his students rushed after him, aghast that the great man might get drenched, and asked if him if he did not have a brolly. He replied that in fact he possessed several but never used them as they made him anxious. If he took a brolly home, he then worried that the next time it rained, he would be at work with no brolly. The converse applied if he took a brolly to work. ‘Why don’t you leave an umbrella each at home and at work’, his student asked? ‘Oh, that is even worse’ he replied. It meant that more often than not, both umbrellas ended up at the same location and he forgot about them. The next time it rained, he was usually at the umbrella-free location. See what I mean? It’s a nightmare!

What I really need is a car, and pronto. This time I need a car that does not necessitate immediate speed-dialling of the RAC as soon as I buy it. Watching those delinquents Clarkson, Hammond and May on the Grand tour hasn’t helped either. Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz…. 🙂

Speaking of Albie as I like to call him, here’s his excellent way of explaining his theory of general relativity: If you are at a party talking to a beautiful woman (this was pre gender-fluidity, bear with me…..), an hour seems like a minute. If you are sitting on a hot stove, a minute seems like an hour. If that’s not crystal-clear, I don’t know what is. Have a dry and toasty weekend.