Nothing but the wild rain

All day at my desk, working really fluently and happily on the book. The rain and hail of the outside world did not tempt me. Instead I worked or Noah-ishly listened to radio or internet clips of the flooding. Things are getting bad for lots of people including the French Bloke and Bouncy Max who have been islanded in Chertsey Meads for some time. But - touch wood - but everything seems fine in Brighton and Mum and Mas fine high up in Edgware. Pleased when Lorraine got home from driving around the county. All good, except for the cats, who are depressed by the rain and tetchy with each other.Spoke to Mum via facetime, and to Janet and Ken, who I will visit tomorrow.

In the bleak but beautiful words of Edward Thomas.

Rain

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying to-night or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.