Monsoon allegedly over

The monsoon is over. It must be true, because John Hammond told me so on the weather forecast on BBC World on September 15th. Unfortunately for him, it's rained every day since...

The monsoon has surprised me. What I'd heard about the monsoon was it rained a lot. Basically pretty much all the time. Well, it doesn't. When it does rain, it really rains, really really rains, but then there will be day after day when nothing falls from the sky at all. No rain, no bird droppings, not even any aircraft, thankfully. Well maybe bird droppings, but I've missed them... It seems Delhi normally gets 260 mm in 11 rainy August days, and 130 mm in 6 rainy September days. But those days are supposed to be before September 15th, and I can assure John Hammond that it's pretty damp out there again today. No amount of John Frieda anti-frizz serum would cut the mustard (because Indians do love those old fashioned British sayings).

Yesterday evening it was raining lightly, and Keir decided he wanted to go out and play for a bit before dinner. I pointed out that it was raining, but he was not deterred. Within five minutes, so much rain was falling that when you looked out the window you didn't see rain, you saw a curtain of water. Then the thunder and lightning started. It was good thunder, because after each clap, you could hear a cheer go up across the estate. It's going to be noisy here when the India/Australia cricket matches take place...

The doorbell rang. I opened the door and on the mat there was a puddle with a very drippy thing in it. It must have been Keir, because it was wearing a British School uniform. Drippy thing went straight into a bath, and I laid his uniform out to dry enough so it could be put in the wash basket.

After dinner, when Rod (I got my socks wet just getting into the car!) had made it home, Keir spoke about his drenching. He stayed out playing when the rain got heavier, but decided to come in once the thunder and lightning started. In a very serious tone he said, "So (Keir cannot start a sentence without the word so), so when the thunder and lightning came I knew I had to come back inside because thunder and lightning can kill people". Having concentrated on one thing (saying the sentence) for as long as that took, he succumbed to his short attention span and ran off, leaving Rod and I pondering just how many people had been killed by thunder. We came to the conclusion it was likely to be a somewhat smaller number than those killed by lightning.