Into every life a lot of rain must fall

It seems I’m having bad luck with water at the moment. Apparently it’s a matter of water, water, everywhere, enough to make me think.

First, as you may remember, there was all that rain falling on my head in Yorkshire at the beginning of the week. Because I had a little free time before my meeting next day, I’d carefully chosen myself a hotel out in the country where I could have a restful and yet bracing walk.

Had I done so, I would have left with a suitcase full of soaking clothes. The rain was drenching down.

Fortunately, I was about to head for somewhere far warmer and, or so I hoped, far dryer: the banks of Lake Como in Northern Italy. This had all occurred by happy chance: a colleague from New Zealand had left the UK when her visa ran out and was having to leave the country before her replacement could start. She agreed that a brief handover between the two of them would be useful, but knew she was unlikely to be allowed back into Britain so soon after her visa’s validity ended.

On the other hand, she was happy to meet our new colleague in one of the countries which she was visiting as part of a sort of grand tour before heading back to the antipodes. Italy fitted the bill. At first, our intention was to meet in Milan, but then we discovered that hotel costs had risen to obscene levels in that fine city. But in Como, on the lake to which it gives its name, prices were about a third as much.

A cheaper alternative to go to a place many would give their eye teeth to visit? Well, we didn’t hesitate.

And indeed it’s beautiful, warm and dry. At least, dry overhead. But it seems I’ve hit more problems with rain all the same. The only difference is that, this time, it’s not falling on me but some distance away: in Switzerland. Where it’s mixing in the rivers with snow melt and forcing the lake’s water level up.

So that we couldn’t actually drive to the hotel where we’re staying. The road was awash. It made me feel like a variant on the Mohammed and the mountain saying: if I couldn’t go to the lake, the lake would come to me.

That's my hotel down at the bottom.
The other side of the floodwater

It is now lapping at the walls of the hotel, making me glad that my room’s on the fourth floor. Still, it’s not terribly menacing at the moment, and most people seem to be enjoying the experience far more than they’re getting worried by it. Especially the kids: there’s something particularly appealing to a child, it seems, to be able to ride a bike straight through a long and deep puddle covering a city street.

Kids enjoying the floods

You’re on the road but in the water. On your bike. What’s not to like?

Still, it feels to me that there’s a lesson for me to learn here. It seems I’m fated to be followed around by rain, in some form or another. And like anyone that tries to outrun his fate, I am only in fact running towards it.

Still. If it gives the kids some fun on their bikes, who am I to complain?