Rain, rain, go away

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/12/rain-rain-go-away

Version 0 of 1.

The shah of Iran once told a British politician he'd swap every drop of oil under his parched soil for a quarter of the rain that fell from our skies.

But, whatever the song says, we don't see the stuff as pennies from heaven. Metropolitan England is getting distinctly nervous now the downpour is closing in. I knew things were serious when the Littlehampton flood warning was top-line news. When, the week before, it was Wales (a small country, far away, of which we prefer to know nothing) it was page 19 stuff. But Littlehampton. My God. What next? Duckboards in Green Park and dinghies in Piccadilly?

Rain is the ultimate spoilsport. Are there a more glum three words in the language than "rain stopped play"? It put the dampener on that wonderful innings by Tino Best at the West Indies v England cricket match. "Here comes that old London Dew again," the American commentator Jack Kramer used to say, wearily, as Wimbledon dribbled to a stop yet again. And then, of course, the ultimate horror. Cliff Richard. Let the rain pitter patter, it really doesn't matter? It damn well does.

Shakespeare hated the stuff. Hence that bitter lyric with its refrain "for the rain, it raineth every day". If, like him, your livelihood was an open-air theatre "rain stopped play" had a particularly painful meaning.

As the great flotilla passed the reconstructed Globe on jubilee weekend I heard a ghostly bard laughing hollowly. What's the glummest scene in all drama? An old man standing on a heath in a rainstorm cursing the bloody stuff falling on his bald pate. What's the glummest opening in English fiction? "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day … the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question." Jane Eyre, of course.

There are great poems about the sun, about trees, about the ocean, about the clouds, even about cats drowning in fishbowls. And rain? "It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring," is about the best one can come up in English, along with: "Rain, rain, go away, Come again on washing day."

The last is a folk memory, of course, from the pre-tech age when washing had to be put on the line, on washday (Monday) and it always rained. Damp underpants all week, again.

Songs? Even the best of them, September in the Rain, is a melancholy ditty about lost love. The would-be cheery songs are frankly awful. The notion that it's not raining rain but raining violets ("so have no regrets") is not just a lousy rhyme but a load of bollocks too. As mother used to say – to get you out of the house and from under her feet – "a little rain won't hurt you". Perhaps not. You can die of hypothermia when it snows, of heat stroke when the sun shines too strong, but rain ("great weather for ducks", etc) just rolls off your back. But it can have devastating effects, as the scenes of flooding in west Wales have shown.

We're getting a bit nervous now. Could global warming turn out to be global wetting? Or, for those not of the Dawkins persuasion, could this be the beginning of the damp apocalypse?

How does that gospel song, Didn't it Rain, Children, go?

<blockquote>It rained 40 days, 40 nights without stopping and Noah was glad when the rain stopped dropping<br />Knock at the window, a knock at the door <br />Crying brother Noah can't you take on more <br />Noah cried no, you're full of sin <br />God got the key and you can't get in </blockquote>

God promised the fire next time – but what if he's having a second go with the rain? He's very unpredictable.

It's been raining for 15 days, now. That gives you 25 left to build your ark, children.