Country Life
By IAN NIALL WALKING with the rain in one's face can be not unpleasant if one hasn't far to go, if every now and
then the sun breaks out, and a bird sings. Some People get a feeling for what Americans sometimes
call THE GREAT OUTDOORS when they face a shower, and I suppose we might have had just the slightest suggestion of that sort of feeling, early in the morn- ing, when we set out to fish. It passed very quickly, for THE GREAT OUTDOORS became hazed and the sun didn't break through. In fact, the rain reached the intensity and force of hail. Two mallards skimmed out of one wind-driven bank of rain to disappear almost at once in the next. The rain which came down the track in a trickle at first soon grew into a stream. We sheltered in one of those 'laybys' used by sheep when the sun is too hot—a sort of hollow in the bank beneath sheltering rocks. We watched the deluge until left in no doubt that, for the first time in years, we must turn back. The river, we saw, was in flood, a swollen, mud-coloured snake twisting down the valley. Somewhere, in the background of the hubbub at home, a faint radio voice said, 'South cones are being hoisted.' I hoped that the sailors facing the gale had everything lashed down, and their oilskin headgear firmly on their beads.
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