Il pleut

I can't believe that I'm sitting here writing memoirs of this time yesterday and our sunny afternoon by the sea, when today's weather is a whole different kettle of fish. The rain started pouring down just after lunch which, after a promising morning of warm welcomes and homemade cakes at morning tea, really rained on my parade. Excuse the expression. With home time looming, I busied myself with a couple of experiments (I now have lots to do after a very successful briefing with Lindy - yay!) and tried to delay starting the journey home. I decided to take the plunge (sorry again) after aimlessly staring at the showers for half an hour and figuring it wasn't going to stop any time soon, but instantly regretted it the second I set off.

It's difficult to put into words just how crap cycling home was. Imagine endless puddles on the cycle path, each one of which is spraying both in your face and up your back as you try to find a speed between getting home as quickly as possible and getting soaked with spray. The only times I wasn't cycling through a puddle, I was cycling over the bumps in the track where tree roots have broken the tarmac, so that was a sore arse added to my already dampened spirits. Add to this the deluge of dirty water that every vehicle bigger than a Fiat 500 launched my way from the road and I felt like I'd had a shower within 5 minutes of leaving the office, with the hurricane that hit me as soon as I scaled the hill up onto the freeway bridge still to negotiate. I reckon it's pretty rare for water to be pouring down, splashing up and whipping you in the face at the same time, but it happened. By the time I reached the electric gates of 1 Queen Street (which felt like the pearly gates of heaven after the trauma I'd just endured), my top was wet through my "waterproof" coat and I was shivering from head to toe. I unlocked the door, staggered through the hallway into the kitchen and Vic took one look at my face before dashing off to the bathroom to run me a hot bath. Where would I be without my new Mum?! She probably only did this to conceal her laughter at my pathetic appearance, but I didn't mind.

After a soak in the bath and some hearty shepherd's pie, I'm just about feeling human again as we sit down to watch last night's X Factor with a cup of tea and some hazelnut dark chocolate. My main worry is that every piece of clothing I wore today, plus my bag and shoes, is hanging up under the air-con unit (there is not one radiator in this house - WHAT) with little hope of drying by morning. To add insult to injury, the forecast is pretty much the same for the rest of the week and I have tomorrow morning's cycle getting irritatingly close already.

So much for the great outdoors, I should have bought a car.

Wet clothes update: I foolishly stuck the neck of my hairdryer into my still sodden Converse the next morning to dry them out, a move I won't be repeating any time soon. Fail number 1: The hairdryer overheated and switched itself off. Fail number 2: I felt around inside said Converse to check their water content without thinking that the metal shoelace holes might have conducted some of the heat from the hairdryer, branding myself with a perfectly circular burn on my knuckle.