Rain

What with the country currently officially having a drought it seems odd that the subject of rain should be on my mind at all, but thankfully the farmers can rejoice, because at least here in Leamington Spa, it’s raining. No only that, it is raining with the grim, forecast persistence that suggests it will be damned if it stops before the weekend and doubly damned if it misses my wedding. Luckily I’m reassured that everything will be just fine. Juuuust fine. It’s probably my frame of mind, but it puts me in mind a group of people inspecting a dent on a car or the partially functioning breaks on a roller coaster.

I had considered trying to keep away from the subject of the impending nuptials and let the wocky be a little island of calm in a stormy ocean of flowers, seating plans and inappropriate questions about who was actually invited, but it won’t work. I just checked the forecast for Warwick again. Google and the weather channel are both against me, but the dear old BBC is predicting cloud. I can totally live with cloud.

Annoyingly, rain is set to haunt me all year, even after the bit with the dress and the speeches. We have chosen ourselves a business where the weather can be the difference between a great day and a massive loss, and we can do nothing about it. It usually affects free festivals more than paid for ones, so Summer Sundae and Barefoot Festival should both be fine (17-19 Aug and 27-29 July respectively) while ones that rely on people showing up on the day like Alcester Food Festival on the 19th of May could well result in us serving tasty goodness to a grey, pessimistic sky full of rain.

There is not really a great deal of preparation that you can do to avoid rain as far as I can tell. Our hatch would happily shield an customers from the worst of the elements while they indulge in street food, and we have a hot menu which would certainly be important, but if there is no one there, they won’t buy the food. All you can do is stand there in your big white dress staring out at it and wondering why last April was so bloody sunny when it had no intention of doing so again.

Like I said, we really can’t keep the wedding out of things at the moment. It keeps waking me up at night to check that I’ve given the registry office the right information or to give me important dreams about arriving on the day wearing nothing but underwear. I really need to stop thinking. It will, of course, all be fine.