Ray Bradbury!

The Author Who Must Have Lived In The Pond Of Eden At One Time
I say this, not because he references Marmite on toast or a bowler-hatted badger on a bike biting a bacon-buttie made on a brown barm, but because he has written two notable stories that deal with endless, ceaseless, unrelenting, remorseless, haunting, hitting perpetual rains.  There is "All Summer In A Day", set on a planet where it rains constantly, bar a half-hour pause once every seven years.

Sic

     The other is "The Long Rain", which is set on Venus, which again is subject to almost constant rains.  Of course we now know that Venus is pretty much the concrete equivalent of Hell in terms of heat and sheer aridity, but Ol' Ray was writing back in 1950, so we forgive him.
     Well, sitting in my big chair and looking out of the window at the shrouded landscape beyond, I get the sense of how the characters in those stories felt.  I did my consitutional walk into Royton earlier this afternoon, and - got wet.  These rains are the sort that hammer down with a dull, malignant persistence that, were they sentient, would have a smug smile on their drenched face.

Must have been an unpleasant shoot

     "Har har," they would hiss - sentient rains do that - "You think this is bad?  Come back in three days time whilst it's still raining!"
     It's not even extreme rain, which would be both exciting and dangerous, like a monsoon.  O no.  These rains are merely insistent.*
     Well, enough - hey, did you see what - O you do - enough of this Intro, we have wibble to work on, and - I think it's about time I put some laundry on**.  Back shortly!

Whilst Swimming To Royton
Which doesn't scan as well as "After Bathing At Baxter's", yet which is equally as wet, and whilst doing so, Your Humble Scribe came across a sight and a site.
     What's that?  It's an album by Jefferson Airplane, you cultureless blocks of granite.  Art?

Very 1967.  Which is fair enough, as that's when it was made.

     The site of the old Health Centre was, for years, surrounded by a plywood wall that became progressively shabbier over time, with bits falling off and holes being knocked into it, until a couple of months ago the entire shoddy structure was removed, the old plot re-ploughed and stout fencing put up.
     Our recent wet weather mixed with occasional sunshine had been a boon to plant life, as witness this shot of the old plot.  Art?

Better in real life

     There are poppies and buttercups - the red and yellow in the above - and purple and white and orange flowers whose names are utterly unknown to me, all against a background of green.  Very English country garden, yet they're all wild flowers, and picturesque enough to entice a flinty-hearted old biffer like Conrad into taking a photograph.

Back To Bedlam
Or, Rosie and Phil's memorial pamphlet.  Which was printed in 1944, well before the Second Unpleasantness ended, though long enough after the Axis forces in North Africa surrendered for a certain unseen smugness to be present.  Art?

     Because the pamphlet only deals with events up to January 1943, they haven't included anything of the 8th Army's advance from Libya into Tunisia, where things became a lot hillier and greener than the desert they were used to.
     Okay, we shall use the map above to teach a lesson in logistics.  See the black dot second from port?  That's Tripoli, the main port where all Axis shipping unloaded.  See those three black dots in a cluster all the way over to starboard?  That's El Alamein.  The two other black dots further to starboard are Alexandria and Cairo.  That's where the 8th Army's supplies came from.  You can see the enormous distance - about 1,200 miles each way if I recall approximately - that Axis trucks had to traverse to deliver supplies, compared to the far shorter route for the forces of Perfidious Albion.  Plus, there was a railway running from the Nile Delta almost to the port of Tobruk, something the Axis could only dream of.

Tripoli harbour, looking a bit the worse for wear

     The DAF (Desert Air Force) also had lots of permanent, well-staffed, well-resourced airfields in the Nile Delta, whereas the Axis air forces were utterly hamstrung by a lack of mobility, operating from way back in the bulge of Cyrenaica.
     I think that's enough verbiage generated by a single photograph.  Let us move on!     

Just For Your Information
I have nearly finished James Crumley's tour de force "The Last Good Kiss", and if I can plunder the opening paragraph -

"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."

     Perhaps it's just the way Your Humble Scribe's mind operates, but it wasn't until three pages later that I twigged this Fireball was an actual bulldog, and that Ol' Jim wasn't merely describing a person of questionable proclivities and appearance.
     O well.

Fireball after a bit of a bender?

Finally
Just to let you know that I'm on the late shift next week, so I don't get in until 19:20 at the earliest - providing the 24 turns up on time, or turns up at all - and BOOJUM!'s links won't get posted on Facebook until I've put my slippers on***.  This also presumes that Dean Lane can be traversed by vehicles, which is not guaranteed.
     Just to prove to you that we really have been flooded, allow me to post a picture of Rochdale town centre - Art?


     That's the bus station.  Normally the River Roch runs at least ten feet below street level, maybe even fifteen, so - yep, flooded.

The pedestrianised town square

     Good lord, if it's this bad here - what must it be like in Hebden Bridge, where a river runs right through the centre of town and only needs rise a couple of feet to flood it!


*  The dastards!
**  Still with the wet theme.  Also there's some Darjeeling to finish off.
***  Cut an old man a bit of slack, won't you?