Rain Stops Play

The forecast for this weekend is for sucky weather. Well, the actual forecast is more something like ‘isolated showers with fresh to strong winds’ but, translated, that means sucky weather. If the forecasters are right (and, let’s face it, often they’re not), we will experience our first weekend of rain. That got me thinking: what on earth do you do in a small town when it is bucketing it down and gale force winds are howling about outside? It has really made me realise just how much of an outdoors place this is. You can go fishing, swimming, take a picnic down to the beach, go hiking in one of the national parks, play sport all year round, but what do you do if you can’t play outside? In the city, I’d wander round a museum or an art gallery, watch the latest film at the cinema or go shopping in a big undercover shopping centre. There are a myriad possibilities in the city when your weekend turns into a wash-out. But what do you do when there is no cinema, no museums or art galleries, and your only shopping centre consists of a couple of supermarkets, a hairdressers, a barbers, and a handful of tacky gift shops?


I suppose we could rediscover the lost art of conversation, perhaps aided by a few glasses of wine. Or we could bring out the Scrabble board, which, considering our competitiveness, may also have to be aided by a few cheeky ones to keep us from initiating divorce proceedings. Maybe we could hire a couple of DVD box sets and catch up on all the shows missed whilst in Thailand. Or curl up on the sofa with a good book. Readers, if you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. If we are cooped up in the house all weekend without anything to do we might just kill each other by the end of it.