Amble in the rain

It rained today. Actually it didn’t just rain, it absolutely lashed it down. Oh that British weather eh?

Why do we moan about the weather so much? This summer will be thought of as a wet, dreary one, due to a month of rain in August. We have forgotten that May, June and July felt like we had shifted a few million miles nearer the Sun.

I say this because today I want to moan about the weather. We’ve had about a month without any serious downpour or storm, and yet I still felt my luck was against me as I walked out the door into a wall of water.

So, today I visited Harrogate and Knaresborough, in the rain. It was quite a reasonable trip to be honest. I hadn’t listened to my ipod in a while so there was a variety of newly loaded stuff on there to get my ear into!

I’ll be honest I didn’t really get to see much of either town, simply because my hood (got to keeps those locks dry) is too big for my head, and so I was walking round with blinkers on the side of my face.

What I did see though is clear evidence of something living in the water of north Leeds, for there were a hell of a lot of runners.

I don’t just mean joggers, but simply normal people cantering around. There was a man walking towards me on the outskirts of Knaresborough, who suddenly set off on a very staggered amble, rather than a jog, that made him look like he was taking his part as an extra for 28 Days Later a bit too seriously.

He ran straight past me and continued the whole way down the street, head bobbing along like a pigeons, but with the stiff, straight arms of a gorilla. I’m pretty sure his mouth would have been frothing and eyes bulging by the time he reached his destination.

There was also a small, rough looking youth who was sprinting after his smaller, rougher, and more youthful looking brother, trying to stop the tyke crossing a dual carriageway.

In the centre of Harrogate I witnessed the delightful scene of a woman running to catch a bus. She missed it by seconds, and so threw up her arms and she came to a halt in that ‘ah shit how could that bastard of a driver set off without me?’

But Leeds has its own share of weirdoes. As I was walking through Hyde Park this morning, I passed the allotments. Stood there in the rain was a man, probably about 50 years old, who obviously loved the Yorkshire’s rainy season. He was in jogging bottoms and a t-shirt: it was freezing! Evidently he was waiting for his plants to grow. Poor codger.