The Rain in June Falls Mainly off the Page

… It had been raining day and night for most of the last two weeks. Certainly it had been non-stop yesterday and the day before and the day before that. The newspapers said it was the wettest June in fifty-six years. This made her laugh because every June was always the wettest June in whatever number of years. As far as she was concerned, it would only be news when June was thirty days of anhydrous sweltering heat…

I wrote this approximately two years, three months, one week, two days and fifty-six minutes ago. Give or take. It appears in Sworn Secret somewhere not too far from the beginning, before the good bit kicks in and things gets sticky for the ‘she’ concerned. My point is not to shout about m’book but to refute your insistence that I possess magical powers, that I can see the future, that I knew about the weather to come in Jubilee June before anyone else, even Michael Fish. Yes, from reading that passage it looks that way doesn’t it? That I knew it was coming. That I knew we’d be blighted with rain the like of which is seldom seen outside an episode of The Killing. But don’t be fooled. I had no idea. For – to be sure – if I had foreseen the biblical nature of the rain that would fall on our green and pleasant land, threaten to drown our kittens, turn roads into duck ponds, and our driveways into broiling seas of mud, I would have written the following:

…The rain bore down upon them like incessant Chinese water torture. Day after day of torrential rain fell continuously, every minute, of every hour, of every day for weeks on end. Certainly it had been non-stop the week before and the week before that and the week before that. The newspapers might have said it was the wettest June since Neanderthals first ripped rhubarb leaves from their stalks to use as makeshift brollies, had anyone been able to read the soggy mess of paper-pulp they’d now mushed into. It made her laugh maniacally – whilst rocking on her bed, foot-root in both feet, fingers beginning to web – to think back to those damp Junes of history past that saw only the odd game of tennis interrupted at Wimbledon. As far as she was concerned the world was drowning and no amount of persuasion would get her to risk leaving the shelter of her room again…

In a way I’m thankful I don’t possess the power to predict the weather. If I did my protagonist might never have ventured out of her room again, which – whilst saving herself from a heap of strife – would have left me without a story to write. On the other hand I’d now be a gazillionaire, having bought all the see-through umbrellas in the world during the heat-wave of March to sell at the Jubilee pageant…