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Rain, rain, go the f*** away!

May 07, 2002 ~ 2:16 p.m.

It�s not often that I see rain as intense as it was Friday evening.

The wife and I were on the 6:22 p.m. train back home when I noticed a remarkably dark line of clouds to the south. As we got further from central London, it indeed started to get progressively dimmer until streetlights were shining on the roads below the tracks. Now, when streetlights shine at a time when the sun should still have enough strength to light up the horizon, you know you�re in for a helluva storm.

I saw forks of lightning, but the most impressive display was the rain. There was a problem with the outbound line at our station, so our train got diverted to East Croydon, further to the south than where we live. At Selhurst, the rain was beating down so hard, I couldn�t help but mutter �damn!� and laugh. I thought it was the best thing I�ve witnessed since a severe squall hit the Umass-Boston campus way back in �93. The wife turned to me and said darkly, �Don�t laugh, we�ll be walking home in this in a minute.�

�Ah, lookit, this storm will peter out in no time,� I said confidently. �By the time we get home, this will have burned itself out.� That having been said, I continued to revel in my fascination with the storm.

I could not have been more wrong. The storm had tons more energy than I gave it credit for. Needless to say, by the time we�d caught our connection back to our home station, it was still raining like the 40-days Bible story. You never realize just how much water the atmosphere can hold until a barrage like this hits you. We stood underneath the metal awning at the top of the stairs leading from the platform and the noise of the rain beating on the awning was so loud it actually drowned out the thunder. We made a hasty retreat up the stairs to the station concourse only to find two inches of water flooding the entire concrete floor.

�Well, shit,� I said. My fascination turned into frustration. My wife had been right. The rain had been falling like machine-gun fire for nearly half-an-hour now and still showed no signs of letting up. The standing water on the concourse floor rose by another inch.

When it did seem to lighten up significantly enough to chance a walk home, we found the sidewalks flooded, water standing nearly 2 feet deep in some places. We had to walk straight into the middle of the main avenue to avoid these lake-size puddles. Thank God we live on an incline, I thought. Though I imagine the street in front of our apartment looked like a waterfall.

We got home, wet and flustered, but the steep in the road had not turned into a waterfall and the rain was nearly over; it was now just a drizzle. It took us 75 minutes to get home when it should only have taken 30.

Talk about a way to kick off a long weekend. Blah! No wonder I only wanted to stay in and watch snooker the entire time. To say that I�d had enough of the great outdoors to last me a few days was an understatement.

And when I woke up this morning, leaden grey skies and a steady light rain greeted me. Weekend over, back to work and back to reality.

Oh, I do love England.

� M.E.M.

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