yeth, maarthter

None of my necessarily limited amount of pictures of the extreme rain in the afternoon were much good so here's a dead fly from Nicky's parent's windowsill noticed last night but not photographed until the slightly improved light of the morning. I'd have liked a better fly-macro to test the fly-macro-sharpening abilities of the new enlargening system (one similar to the obligatory new-macro-lens-fly-macro of 2007 would have been better) but this will have to do for today. It was thoroughly dead and not going anywhere but there was a small risk it might have been whisked off by cleaning-processes if the hairspray which killed it hadn't also anchored it to the woodwork. It would have been better with a proper tripod or the micro-tripod used supplemented by something to hold the end of the too-heavy lens in place rather than attempting to do it all with hands at the speeds required for f/11. I did think about stealing it to practise on but it didn't quite fit in a memory card case without being crushed slightly.

The rain on the way back wasn't quite as extreme as it could have been but it was almost at the point where lines on the road were obscured by the splishing of driplets and the spray from speeding lorries and buses completely knackered visibility for anything up to fifty metres behind them; trying to stay wee back didn't work as they just end up steaming past on either side. Nicky had discovered a large outdoorstuff shop in Coatbridge at which we stopped for her to poke at gas stoveythings for her shed and for me to disparage the size and design of tents, where the rain was extremely handy in demonstrating silliness of door-flap positioning. As far as I'm concerned our existing tent is fine (providing you don't mind cooking outside in the rain) but if we're going to upgrade we're going to get something which can still be easily carried on the back in a rucksack rather than one of those daft things in which it's possible to stand upright but which require their own trailer to transport.

Still raining when we got home; it increased to thunder-strength just before we popped out for some food so that we were able to observe it from our own doorway rather than someone else's , It all seemed a bit sudden for the drains to cope with which will hopefully make anyone thinking of chopping down any trees to think again as it's trees which play a large part in getting recently-fallen rain back into the atmosphere during the summer. Nicky's parents' new neighbours' garden is already a tree down since their arrival a few months ago; it's one thing complaining about intrusive roots and poor soil but entirely different when the problems are soil erosion and waterlogging.