The rain it raineth every day

I hear it was quite hot in the south this week. Thankfully I was in Cumbria where it rained - no, poured - hour after hour every day.

Remarkably my son's cricket team still managed to complete two games in their three-match tour and the third (at Braithwaite just outside Keswick where I took the picture above) was only abandoned after 40 overs (ie almost half the match).

"We'll not get much play today," I said to one spectator during the morning of the first match, on Tuesday, in Penrith.

"It'll be alright," he said, peering through the drizzle as more dark clouds gathered above us. "It's clearing up."

"You're an optimist," I said.

"No," he said, "I'm a Cumbrian."

He was right, of course. An hour later conditions were deemed good enough to start the match, which was then played to a conclusion.

Thursday however defied logic because the teams managed to complete all 100 overs despite the fact that it had been raining non-stop for 18 hours before the game.

The rules were simple: (1) if the ball could bounce, the game was on; (2) rain would only stop play if it was really hammering down.

As I stood there, sheltering under my 'Smokers' Welcome' umbrella, I was reminded of a limerick from my childhood:

The rain it raineth every day
Upon the just and unjust fella,
But more upon the just
Because the unjust's
Got the just's umbrella

How true.