Yesterday morning dawned bright and clear, though slightly cooler than it had been. By lunch-time, there was a good covering of cloud, some of it rather grey, and the air felt muggy.
I knew I would have to go to the PO box in the afternoon. Tim wanted to know if the student id card for his OTC course had come yet, and I wanted to check if there were any more birthday cards or gifts for him. The Post Office is usually only open during mornings (7.30am - 1.30pm, Monday to Friday) but on Thursdays it's also open for a couple of hours in the afternoon. We can access the PO box when the Post Office is closed, of course, but I had a feeling there might be a parcel too big for the box.
I didn't want to get caught in rain, and the sky continued to look threatening, but by 4.15 or so I knew I would have to go soon. I looked for an umbrella, but realised I have NO idea where we've put them. Richard packed all our winter clothes away when we moved here at the start of July, and I couldn't see the umbrellas anywhere obvious.
Oh well, I thought. It wasn't cold and it might be quite fun to be caught in the first rain of the season. It was unlikely to last long. So I set out. At least it wasn't too hot: with the cloud cover, the temperature everywhere was only about 30C, the 'shade' temperature for the day.
After about ten minutes, I felt a drop of water on my right foot. I glanced around, but couldn't see any other raindrops. Five minutes later, I felt another. Strange - just one drop, nothing else visible. This continued all the way to town - a fifteen minute walk - and it didn't really occur to me how odd it was that only my right foot should have felt these drops.
Then I discovered the source. The small water-bottle, which I carry everywhere during the summer, was not properly fastened. It had leaked all over my bag... and was slowly dripping out.
There wasn't much mail in the PO box, but there was indeed a slip telling me that there was a parcel too big to fit inside. So I collected it from the Post Office. It was three more of Tim's theology books, which I had ordered from Amazon.com. Yes, the American Amazon. With the dollar being so weak at present, prices there are excellent from the European point of view. More significantly, Amazon.com counts Cyprus as part of Europe, whereas Amazon.co.uk does not. So postage from Amazon USA is actually cheaper than postage from Amazon UK. I had expected that shipping would be considerably slower, so was very impressed that these books had arrived within about ten days of our order.
By the time I got home again I was pretty warm - the weather was rather muggy, even though the sun wasn't out much, but it didn't rain. Nor has it rained today although it's still forecast. I do hope we get SOME rain and thunder before the end of the month.
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