Let it rain let it rain.

Rain- let it rain, let it rain.

Yesterday it rained quite heavily. Yes, my friends it rained. It rained because we saw it, you saw it and I saw it but didn't quite feel it. The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and 5 newscasters told us about it, confirmed its existence, made it headline news. You couldn't avoid it even if you'd tried. It followed you on the way to school, university, the shops, work and everywhere north, south, east and west. It hammered down on the rooftops and bounced off the chimney stacks with an almost comical inevitability.  Sadly it led to torrential flooding, crashing down onto pavements categorically and  overwhelming us. It was just unavoidable. You must have seen it. It was great fun to watch.

Oh the English weather. There can be no other all consuming topic that so dominates our lives. It's either hot or cold, lukewarm, not warm enough, too cold or it just keeps raining. But hey hold on. We love the rain privately. How can you not like the rain? It makes us laugh occasionally. It gave something Gene Kelly something to dance about and Morecambe and Wise something to send up and satirise.

Sadly though the rain is something that seems to be synonymous with the English climate rather like roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and veg satisfies our Sunday lunchtime hunger. If it stopped raining we'd wonder why and possibly conduct an inquest on the subject. But rain remains one of our most charming pre-occupations because the British can't get enough or less of it. We'd like to see less of it but even if it stopped for a while we'd soon wonder what had happened to it.

Today was consistently dry but it felt for a moment that the rain was just waiting for the right moment. But last night my wife and I were watching the TV and suddenly the wet stuff began to fall persistently and then seriously. We heard it. The streets outside sounded like some distant car wash, the rain washing against our windows and then increasing its strength, pounding down eventually  and then stopping for a while to take stock of what had just happened. At the Weather Centre they call it persistent precipitation but I think of it as good old fashioned rain.

Across the road the first Christmas decorations were beginning to show, But it was the rain that seemed to have fallen. It was quite possibly the first rain some of us had seen since - well, since June or August. Or maybe it had rained and we hadn't been aware of it. Perhaps it was just a rumour or some optical illusion. Still I'm inclined to think rain should be celebrated rather than lamented. At some point during the year the weather has to adopt its traditional patterns, its regular cycles.

But when the rain arrives our reactions or more or less predictable. We pass comment, we observe, we remark on its frequency or rarity. It always rains and in Britain it never stops. It rains on our birthday, summer picnics in the park, barbecues in the garden and always, always, during the summer. Do we ever get any respite from the rain? Once it starts raining it just keeps going. It rains on hedges. It rains on flowers. It rains on cars. It rains on buses. It rains on trees, It rains on everything, It disrupts Wimbledon tennis, cricket Test matches and then it just feels as if it's destined to rain until the end of time. It's just boring though and repetitive I hear you say. But then remember summer brings with it the potential for hot, warm and sunny days. Terribly sorry though it's Britain we're talking about, not Spain, Italy, Greece, the USA, the Caribbean or some paradise island where the palm trees always sway.

In Britain it rains on hills, on country lanes, on poor sheep, cows, cats and dogs, wind turbines, cafes, buildings, restaurants, the meadows of our green and pleasant land, the post office down the road, the ditches, walls, the valleys and vales, the rivers and those little thatched cottages next to another thatched cottage.

The rain never discriminates or makes any concession to the time of the year. It rains during the winter, summer, spring, or autumn. There are warnings but there can be no knowing when or why. One day you can fling open your curtains or blinds and the clouds will stare darkly at you and you've no resistance to it. But rain is marvellously refreshing and invigorating. Rain though has always been  top of the news agenda because it's newsworthy. A world without rain would be somehow much less exciting and possibly much the poorer.

To be honest rain induces a marvellous sense of  comfort and warmth. We look outside our windows with a pleasant sense of relief. We're watching Strictly or David Attenborough's wondrous new production on the animals of the world. How good does that feel? There is something soothing and calming about the sound of rain, something that is strangely relaxing about that gentle, incessant tapping against our window panes. It has its very own music, tempo, rhythm and insistence about it. It is, particularly in August, quite poetic and literate, verging on the romantic. Maybe this is due to the fact that August is on the threshold of autumn and although it shouldn't rain it does and in a way it is poetically welcome. First it comes down in brief showers and then it just comes down in buckets.

The world of literature lends itself very neatly to rain. George Orwell, that great 20th century social commentator once said that it always seemed to rain in Norway which does come as surprise to the British because we thought we had a monopoly on rain. It's our rain and it's something we're rightly proud of.

Then there was the delightful Somerset Maugham, a man whose short stories were so vividly and beautifully descriptive that even rain was written about with love and care. Maugham's short story, if I remember correctly, about rain was just astonishingly lovely. No-one has ever written about rain with such feeling and affection. It almost felt as if he might have been writing about a precious ornament or a day in the country.

And yet the rain continues to stir our senses, influencing our mood or day which maybe it shouldn't but probably does. If it rains we can forget about hanging our washing on the line or popping down to Southend for the day in June. Rain, we think is a inconvenience, a hindrance, a preventative measure,  but probably quite amusing because you can throw your umbrella up in the air, rush to the bus stop, pull your coat over your head, throw your inhibitions away and then take off your hood just for the sheer fun of it.

Children take enormous delight in jumping into puddles which they couldn't if the sun was out. Rain takes you through the whole gamut.of emotions. There is the sorry realisation that it's here and then an immediate  recognition that without it the crops would never grow and besides it hadn't rained for I don't know how long. There is the inherent  dread and fear that it'll carry on for the next six weeks and six months - probably for much longer than it should but then it always rains at this time of the year.

Oh I don't know. Let it rain. Let Michael Fish come out of retirement and make another accurate prediction without quite the devastating impact of 1987. No, we can take the storms, the thunder and lightning and those despairing deluges. I still miss though those old BBC weather forecasters such as Bert Ford, Barbara Edwards, the aforementioned Michael Fish and sundry others. Ford, from what I can remember seemed to live at the Weather Centre and always seemed to get the weather almost right but not quite, a man of great foresight and vision but never quite sure even if he privately was.

In the old days of course it didn't rain quite as much as we thought it had.  According to Randy Crawford it was always a 'Rainy Night in Georgia'. It certainly didn't rain exactly 40 years ago because in 1976 we had the most sweltering, gloriously warm and tropically delicious heatwave. It had been of the balmiest summers Britain had ever enjoyed.

The memory tells me that, finally on the August Bank Holiday, the first cracks of thunder and flashes of lightning returned to British shores. It lashed down  with meaning and intent. It almost felt at the time that we would never witness rain in any kind of form ever again. In Britain maybe our rain is dramatic in its intensity, deliberate in its ferocity. Wow did you see that rain yesterday. But it always rains in England and hey it'll stop in a minute and Nigel Farage will stop drinking pints of Guinness and Theresa May will look comfortable when she steps onto a stage and Donald Trump will actually look and sound like an American president. And then finally somebody will actually add Brexit to the English dictionary and we'll still be none the wiser.

Rain is though has almost come to define the British culture. It's woven into the social fabric of our way of life. Perhaps it is annoying and infuriating and unnecessary, Perhaps it should be forbidden and banned for ever more, Perhaps it should be outlawed, banished to somewhere else. Maybe there should be some embargo placed on it, Maybe it should be taxed, held to account, driven to another city, county or state, punished, reprimanded, told to stay behind after school and hold its head in shame. Perhaps the rain should be driven away, excommunicated, tried in a court of law, extradited, exposed on one of those crime TV programmes, ridiculed, attacked on Question Time or just told to stop once and for all.

The fact though remains that rain is here to stay. There it goes again, slanting and sweeping across your face as you wrestle with that wretched umbrella again. There is an enchanting regularity about the rain because if it gets too hot and humid we'd probably miss it. Oh yes I think most of us would readily admit that if it didn't rain we'd probably ask questions and somehow miss it. Don't we love it.though. Now let me dig out my raincoat again. Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain.