Listening to the gentle rain

No dog walking today, Pip called to say Andrew would be taking the dogs out, so lie in until nine and just listen to the rain pit patting against the window. Get up and toast some rye bread and make coffee and then spread the toast with butter and honey and make my way into the Garden Room, where I eat my breakfast, whilst listening to Neil Ferguson's Reith lectures. Is it just me, or is it only academics and politicians who have never had a real job, who seem to think they have all the answers? Part of me agrees with Furguson, about diminishing the power of the state and returning to individual responsibility, but somewhere inside lurks a suspicion that he is just a "useful idiot", enrolled for elitist propaganda. Who looks out for "the little people", like you and me, if the state is rolled back. People who can't afford lawyers to fight their corner, and can't afford private education, much less avoid taxes by hiring smart accountants. What about us! So far my e-petition to separate retail and investment banking has one signature, mine! Perhaps nobody minds that we are being used as a human shield to protect City of London gamblers against losses, so that if they go down, we all go down. Even St Vincent Cable seems to have caved in to the lobby from the city of London!
After breakfast I shower and change and drive to Right Car, to try and pull forward the delivery date of Sarah's new car from Friday the 13th to Thursday the 12th. It might be superstitious twaddle, but I will feel better when she is driving down to Derbyshire in it on Friday. It took a while, an hour and a half to be exact and so I didn't arrive in the pool until one. It has been pouring with rain all morning and so the pool is quiet and I have a lane to myself and swim 100 lengths, 2,500m in medleys 4 x 400m in each stroke and then 9 x 100m individual medleys. After changing, I eat a tea and scone in the cafe before driving to Tesco to park and then having a potter round town. The only thing I buy is an Ian Rankin novel that I haven't yet read from a charity shop for a pound, I adjourn later for a coffee in Caffe Nero and spend an hour doing the Times sudoku and kakura before calling at Tesco for some wine and a few bits of shopping. Finally arriving home around seven, and after unpacking my shopping, put the oven on to warm up, whilst I knock up a tossed salad with slices of Gran Padano cheese. I eat this with crusty bread and a glass of South African Cabernet Sauvignon, whilst my cannelloni is cooking. When it is ready I eat it with another glass of wine, whilst listening to Front Row on radio four. Now I feel that I have, perhaps, had too much wine, but I prefer to believe that I have eaten to much and the extra wine just helped to wash it down. Wine makes me sleepy, and as I type this blog, the rain is still falling steadily outside. There is something profoundly soothing in listening to a gentle rainfall, but you need space and silence to appreciate this. When I was talking to Anne Fahey, after Mass on Sunday, she told me she listens to music whilst she runs, on a lunch time. I find it sad that modern, or rather post modern life, has no time for silence, no time to listen to the sound of the gentle rain as it falls.