Listing to Port

Drizzle, failsnow, bird lubrication, leaky skybath, wetting, precipitation, tinkling it down, shower, calling the clouds to come home to the sea, dragon wee, a visit from the mobile mud factory, doing that wet thing, sogging, cloud vomit, the dawn of the gadget apocalypse, invitations to the snail party, underwhelming, turning on the Scotland Simulator, mandatory washtime, liquid sunshine, enchanting wetsplat, water prison break, monsoon, cloudburst, tree drink, torrents, h-two-go, homeopathic sky noodles, the minnow space programme phase 1, puddle generation, bucketing, regional moistening, locking up the water cycle against the rack of earth, unmuggifying, post-cumulus drip, coming down in stairrods, the sky god’s clammy handshake, drip diving, dedessication, bedragglementification, an impromptu round of roof-drumming, deluge, sky piddle, storm, gravity water, the tears of angels watching over Earth’s reckless onion-chopping, a good sousing, drop pogo, cats and dogs out there, rain.

1. The giant, indestructible umbrellas of children’s literature, usable as helicopters and boats and sails, always taking you somewhere exciting and absolute proof against gentle rain
2. Umbrellas with holes in as a cunning assassination strategy against foes who are water-soluble
3. Those umbrellas that are actually giant robotic craneflies in disguise, waiting for the windy autumn of their dreams so that they can fold back their wings, stretch their legs and leap from the umbrella stand to bat up against the windows and out of the house
4. Cocktail umbrellas that completely failed to keep your margarita dry in an unsuspecting tropical storm
5. Umbrellas living in the graveyard of lost umbrellas, those which were turned inside-out by the wind and perched on the lip of a damp bin, but have been rescued by something with clacking claws in the dead of night and taken to a creaking, scraping sanctuary somewhere underground
6. Umbrellas against rains of frogs, having on their upper surface a large pool for safe spalshdown and an escape valve for when one is passing a pond
7. Umbrellas for protection against things other than rain, sun, wind or frogs; for example: unwanted acquaintances, embarrassment, bullets or melancholy

1. Snunder. Despite the name, snunder is not a type of thunder but rather a type of rain. It occurs in places that have been subject to some act of public high drama or tragedy and can most easily be distinguished from normal rain by its slightly thicker, stickier texture and its salty taste. It is derived from the spectral mucous of sobbing ghosts. Ghosts are often particularly sentimental, and those ghosts that have no limitations on their travel in space often gather at sites that mean something to them. Note: this is not the gentle drizzle derived from the decorous crying of melancholy phantoms, which can hardly be distinguished from sea-spray. Snunder only occurs in places where sad ghosts are really going for it. Since some ghosts can also travel in time, the unexpected arrival of snunder can also mean that some public tragedy is about to occur; for example, it is rumoured that Princess Diana’s 1997 death in Paris was presaged by a particularly sticky snunder rain.

2. Avioplop. This is the theoretical rainfall that would occur if a sufficiently dense cloud of aircraft above a city all voided their toilet waste at the same time. Needless to say, a rain of avioplop is not a particularly welcome event. Some projections of future aviation demand which have not thought through their premises particularly well suggest that, by 2300, most major conurbations will be subject to avioplop. Little do they know that by 2300 27% of passengers, via a combination of genetic engineering and advanced physics, will have no bladders but instead void directly into a small one-way portal into deep space. Aircraft toilet demand will therefore be significantly reduced and only very flight-dense regions, such as the airspace above Beijing, will be at risk of it.

3. Gin rain. There have in fact been three documented gin rains, as far as we can work out. The first, in rural Texas in 1873, led to a scandalous episode of widespread intoxication. The second and third gin rains occurred in Lusaka in 1950 and in Archangelsk in 2005; less information is available about them. Gin rains are not more widely reported because for some reason governments seem particularly interested in hushing them up. Why governments should be interested in what we assume are the failures of experimental methods of gin production is beyond us. Maybe we should expect the advent of weaponised gin at arms fairs at some point.