nice weather for ducks

Things I Like About Heavy Winter Rainstorms, such as the all-day deluge we had for most of yesterday:

• Puddles! Huge puddles all over Cape Town, mostly on the sides of the roads, so you can drive through them with that satisfying spray of water (having first, of course, checked that there are no pedestrians within splash range, because I may like jumping in puddles, but I'm a nice person, really).
• Walking in the rain with my big black umbrella, with water going "splat!" from the dripping trees.
• Walking in the rain without my big black umbrella, because it makes me feel so alive to get thoroughly drenched. Although Granny Weatherwax is right, mark you: if you relax and enjoy it instead of walking all hunched up, you don't get nearly as wet. I have to admit, though, that striding madly through the rain with a huge, demented grin on my face gets me some very odd looks from the more conventionally rain-phobic.
• Damp students. They get cute spiky hair and that mournful look, like soaked puppies.
• Happy Egyptian geese. Yesterday afternoon there was one honking ecstatically and paddling joyously around the young lake that used to be a fairway on Mowbray Golf Course.
• Half-waking in the middle of the night to hear the drum of rain on the roof.
• Discovering a new and enthusiastic leak in the kitchen ceiling, and the happy little thrill of realisation that it's the Evil Landlord's problem, not mine.

I am forced to the conclusion that somewhere deep in my psyche there's a small, unrepentant bit that's eternally about 12 years old.

Put Mother on the plane to the UK yesterday, which was sad. During her month's stay she has made three sets of curtains and upholstered one chair, as well as having an epic wrestle with two separate dentists. She's back in December to meet her new grandchild. (My sister's baby, I hasten to add, lest any distant and ill-informed readers should feel the need to faint in shock).

Must now go and dissect William Gibson with my third-years. Heigh-ho.