The heavens opened while we were out and in retrospect us tourists, who had brought no raincoats for we own no raincoats, probably owe our health if not our lives to the wisdom of the Slimms who gently suggested that we use the spare raincoats that they had available.
A thing that I had forgotten about life in dear old England was the ski jacket that is the commonly worn protection of the Englishman in his everyday life, protecting him as it does from the wet, the damp and the cold that are the normal state of the English climate. We do not need these things in Australia. If it rains we deploy the umbrella and if that fails we use the modern invention of Shelter. If we find ourselves in the unfortunate situation of being Heavily Rained Upon, we shrug our shoulders, suck it up, maybe complain a little, and either wait for the wetness to evaporate or else change our clothes.
Be all that as it may, and returning at least for the moment to the point, we walked across Gamlingay and out a little way in the country where among the sodden fields was nestled a little oasis where the land was divided up into sodden allotments.
On a different, sunnier day, we wandered down there again, ironically under motor power in the Hocus Focus. The heavens failed conspicuously to open and we whiled away some time as Eloise and Mick harvested some vegetables and generally performed mysterious allotment tasks the secrets of which I chose not to inquire too far into.
There was a shed, and chairs, and many rows of finely ordered plants, all growing. Clearly a finely maintained allotment, much like my Mum's.
Around the allotments, rough borders of cornflowers in the summer sun.
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