Il pleut.

Starting about ten last night, it rained torrentially until around lunchtime today. I know we need water, but I' can't recall such a wet spring. We've nearly run out of firewood, and Mystère is getting cabin fever.

This afternoon the clouds thinned a little and thinking it wasn't going to get any better than this I went out to look for a blip. Having achieved my mission I went home, beating the next torrential shower by about five minutes.

Over the last rainy week I have spent spare moments listening to the BBC podcast of Jon McGregor's The Reservoir Tapes. The fifteen episodes were commissioned as a companion piece to Reservoir 13. The tapes have also been published as a book, but I think it's really worthwhile listening to them; they are all beautifully read. I can't recommend them too highly. He's taken the opposite approach to the novel: where it had a neutral, bird's eye view of the community, each of these episodes is told in the voice of one of the characters (one of the pleasures is the different voice for each episode). The episodes don't all directly address Rebecca's disappearance, but they all give further insight not just into the characters but into the life of the village; the stories intertwine as the lives do, and things unsaid or hinted at in one episode may be further developed in another. I found myself totally absorbed in them.