It rained today. I don’t mean in that usual London “oh, look it’s raining” kind of way. I mean in a “bloody hell, it’s really raining” kind of way. Torrential rain. But in twenty minute spurts that are separated by bright sunshine.
We were caught in in whilst we were out for a walk this morning. The walk from the corner of our road to our house drenched us both completely. Having changed into dry clothing, any sane person would have decided to stay at home in front of the telly for the rest of the day. Looks like I’m not a particularly sane person.
You see, I already had a ticket to go and see Children of Men at the Streatham Odeon this afternoon. And nothing was going to stop me getting there. Now it just happens that the quickest way to get to the Streatham Odeon is to walk, which takes about half an hour. On a sunny day it’s a nice walk across the common.
When it was time to leave, the sun was shining and, having been home for an hour, I had managed to forget how bad the weather had been earlier. So I set off. I decided not to walk right across the common, but to stick to the paths round the side. Halfway down the path, it started raining again. But, of course, it started raining quite lightly and I kept on going. Then it got harder and harder and I still kept going – after all I was over halfway there, no point in turning back. I passed a few people sheltering at a bus shelter and turned into the home straight towards the cinema.
At that point I realised just how strong the rain was. The road I had turned into was uphill and coming down the hill towards me was a river of rainwater. It was at about that point that my shoes sprung a leak. I decided to go back to the bus shelter and consider my options. A bus had picked up the people who had been waiting and I had the shelter to myself for about a minute until a youngish woman joined me. She complained about the rain and asked if I had a cigarette. She then complained about the rain again and asked me if I was “looking for something”. At that point I remembered that I was deep in Cynthia Payne territory and that often you see scantily-clad women along that stretch of road chatting to passing motorists. I was standing in a bus shelter in pouring rain and this woman was offering sexual favours in exchange for money. I declined politely and she apologised for her mistake. But she obviously felt that we were good enough friends that she would start to tell me just how bad business had been today because of the rain. Apparently, one of her regulars had turned up, but he didn’t have the sense to bring an umbrella.
I didn’t really have much to say to that, but luckily at that point the rain eased up and she decided to wander off back into the heart of the common looking for passing trade.
I considered my options. I still had time to get to the cinema and it had stopped raining. But I was drenched and really didn’t want to sit in the cinema for two hours in soaking wet clothes. I cut my losses and wandered home (in the, by now, bright sunshine) to change into dry clothes for the second time today and to ponder the strange people that you can meet in London.