slop

I'm always disappointed when wandering through Princes Street Gardens in persistent but warm summer rain that there are never any people sitting stubbornly on the benches or the chairs in front of the bandstand with a coolbox, set of matching flasks, a small portable wireless, some sandwiches and a pork pie each and determined expressions. It almost happened when there was tennis on and it was pissing it down yet people were still sitting watching the big screen in Festival Square. Perhaps if there was something more entertaining on on the stage rather than just a couple of folded up chairs. Perhaps if the jakeys were rounded up from the little shelter things on the path a little further along to the east and loaded onto the stage some people might like to eat their lunch whilst watching them.

Though they had all wimped out and started using umbrellae there were a few other people pottering about when I went out for my lunchwalk. A few without umbrellae were attempting to find the few bits of under-tree space where the rain was effectively lighter rather than just concentrated into fewer but larger droplets by the leaf-canopy. As the rain lightened and the sun returned I again wished I had a twin so that one of us could have omitted the allegedly-breathable light bicycling anorak to see whether the person getting rained on or the person sweating was the dampest at the end of half an hour's medium-paced wandering.

It sort of lightened up on the way home but by the time I'd poked about on the computer a bit and stretched prior to heading out for a run it started to utterly piss it down in a quite extreme manner. I would have liked to have been able to go and stand in the garden but our antisocial fuckwit underneighbour has been spending most of his evenings recently filling the air in the garden and immediately outside our door with weedsmoke so I just headed out for a run anyway, though without my phone in step-counter mode seeing as heavy rain has been known to kill a pocketed phone. As well as having to watch out for exceptionally deep puddles, little baby froglets jumping one way across the path and slugs migrating in the other direction there was a troupe of cyclists heading towards me from the Duddingston end of the path, not something I normally mind though (as with any large group of any type of people) some of them were forgetting their manners and were riding two abreast on a path already significantly narrowed by heavy vegetation, further impeding the path by being weighted down with rain. A few noticed but a few had to be slightly shouted at seeing as they weren't prepared to look where they were going and I tend not to carry my bike bell with me when running. On my way back they were all clustered in the tunnel yapping to each other whilst sheltering but leaving only a person-sized gap to scuttle through. If you're a member of a cycling club, don't, especially when there are two bits of rougher ground to the side of the smooth path suitable for standing yapping on but a bit hazardous to scuttle over.