Long to rain over us: why rain is sometimes pretty wonderful

Rain has a bad reputation. It is the ruiner of barbecues, outdoor weddings and once immaculate hairstyles. Many artists have turned it into a metaphor for horrible, soul-crushing sadness. It's hard to hold a candle in it in cold November. Don't leave cakes out in it. The 15 July, St Swithin's Day, is even dedicated to determining whether we're going to have to put up with 40 more days of it.

But really, everyone, most of the time it's not all that bad. Here's a short tribute to the stuff that got Gene Kelly singin'.

You get to wear wellies
While everyone else is doing the oh-shit-I'm-wearing-Uggs two step around all the puddles, you, the master of the weather, stride confidently through them, feeling like the genius you are. And some even have jelly bean designs.

It is the bringer of rainbows
The symbol of wonderful institutions such as peace and Pride and Skittles only exists because of rain.

It inspires human resourcefulness
Rain is nature's version of a surprise quiz, designed to see who on our streets can handle this bonus obstacle. Faced with a rainstorm, people are forced to get creative. Will you cover up with a free newspaper and be scrubbing ink off your hands for days? Will you sacrifice 5p to rig up a fetching plastic bag head scarf? Or are you going to just make a run for it, as if you can outpace the weather? Total Wipeout for the masses.

We suddenly have something to talk about
'Horrible weather isn't it?' 'Did you hear that storm last night?' 'It's a bit damp outside!' are considered riveting conversational openers in Britain.

Sometimes it understands you
I don't want to walk through brilliant sunshine, surrounded by singing birds and smug daffodils when I'm feeling enraged. I want moody rock video, mascara-smudging, hair-drenching, splashing-off-the-pavement rain. Call it pathetic fallacy if you will, but I'm not ashamed.

You finally get to use the umbrella you've been lugging around
They called you paranoid but who's laughing now? You can get three, maybe three and a half, uses out of this thing before it surrenders to the wind and snaps like an After Eight, so you're not missing an opportunity to get it out. Plus some even have jelly bean designs.

It's sexy
Books and movies and TV shows aren't just using rain to show us that their characters are deeply emotionally perturbed at how things turned out. How many times have writers sat around agonising over the missing quality to make that romantic climax scene really work and suddenly thought, 'I know - we'll add rain!' It makes sense: we know they've got to really want that snog if they're willing to get soaked to the skin for it.

No, it's not The Notebook. Yes, that is a cat.

Pavements look ridiculously good in rain
Not just because it washes the layer of crap off them, either. Street lamps glimmer and gleam like a light show beneath your feet. Here's the photographic version.

It clears the streets quicker than a tiger on the loose
Goodbye, pesky slow-moving tourists and families with five children spread across the pavement. Hello intrepid rain lovers, charging through the water with purpose. Just be sure to dodge the umbrellas.

There's that magical 'smell after the rain'
I vaguely remember the air smelling better after a good old rainstorm, but that was before I moved to London, where it always smells vaguely like the colour grey.

It's better than snow
Take all your issues with rain, freeze them, and let them linger around for a week before turning to brown mush. Feel like hugging a raindrop yet?

It makes being inside that much better
You won't appreciate the sheer joy of being dry and warm and drinking tea until you've got a storm to compare it against.

Five must-see films of summer 2013

The weather may be predictably unpredictable, but British summer can always be relied upon to bring us a host of decent films. Here are five to catch for when the rain is pouring and you've tired of tennis.

Monsters University

Friday 12^th July

Director: Dan Scanlon

Starring: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi

It’s been twelve years since Sulley and Mike first appeared on our screens in Monsters, Inc., allowing young fans of that film to grow up and reach a new life stage scarier than any monster: university. In Toy Story 3, Andy’s departure for university was timed just as those of us who grew up with the series were packing our bags, books and saucepans and leaving home ourselves. The result was cinemas full of weeping eighteen year-olds, nostalgic adults, and young children still laughing at Mr Potato Head wobbling about as a tortilla wrap. Hoping to draw a similarly diverse audience, the new prequel goes back to Sulley and Mike’s university days, where their initial impressions of each other are anything but favourable as they learns the tricks of the scare trade. By resorting to familiar characters in a situation now relevant to their old audience, Pixar are playing it safe in a bid to move on from the relative failure of Cars 2 and Brave. Will it be a roaring success or just scarily bad? With Finding Dory in the pipeline, let's hope this new run of sequels live up to expectations.

Despicable Me 2

Friday 28^th June

Director: Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin

Starring: Steve Carrell, Ken Jeong, Kristen Wiig

Unlike Pixar, Universal waited only three years to release a sequel to their surprise hit Despicable Me, in which super villain Gru (voiced by Steve Carrell) found himself adopting three orphans in a bid to outdo his arch nemesis Vector (Jason Segel) by becoming the most notorious force of evil in the world. The whacky plot, witty script and fabulously memorable characters produced one of those rare films that makes you laugh more than is strictly appropriate in a public setting, and leaves you wondering what happens next. Now Gru and his dysfunctional crew are back, including the scene-stealing, dungaree-clad minions, but this time he’s using his evil skills for good, working with the Anti-Villain League to save the world. It’s a tall order, but if the sequel can produce the same high quality, quirky humour, we’re in for a treat.

Man of Steel

Friday 14^th June

Director: Zack Snyder

Starring: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Russell Crowe, Michael Shannon

Following Chris Nolan’s moody Batman reboot, superhero films are no longer just fast, fun, quip-filled epics. Now, it’s all about the angst and burden that comes with having awesome powers. Traditionally, Superman has always been the ultimate good guy, unfailingly moral and bordering on indestructible, so naturally everyone scoffed at the thought of this primary-colour-clad icon as a troubled, isolated figure. And then the trailers came out, and we all stopped laughing and stared open-mouthed at a stubble-bedecked Superman apparently working on an oilrig. We may even have drooled a little. But we certainly put aside our doubts and got on board. Let’s hope it’s as tough as the name suggests.

The Bling Ring

Friday 5^th July

Director: Sophia Coppola

Starring: Emma Watson, Katie Chang, Israel Broussard

If the plot wasn’t based on real events, it would sound too ridiculous for a film. Fascinated with the hedonistic celebrity lifestyle that surrounds them, a group of wealthy LA teens decide to literally bag themselves a piece of it, by burgling the homes of the rich and famous. Having proved she can actually act in last year’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Emma Watson continues in her mission to shed her Harry Potter image as one of the bad girl burglars. However, early reviews are commending the performances of the relative unknowns who make up the gang, particularly Katie Chang and Israel Broussard. The gang’s obsession with fame, and their use of social media and the internet to target their victims makes for a pertinent look at the attractions and issues of modern celebrity culture.  

Now You See Me

Wednesday 3^rd July

Director: Louis Leterrier

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Morgan Freeman, Woody Harrelson

Let’s forget that Movie 43 has conclusively proved that a talented cast does not guarantee a great film, and ogle what has got to be one of the best line ups this year. The dream team includes rising stars Isla Fisher, Dave Franco (James’ younger brother), and Jesse Eisenberg (yes, he’s definitely there somewhere behind the beard), alongside reliable regulars Woody Harrelson and Mark Ruffalo, and acting heavyweights Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine. Apparently burglars are the fashionable profession this summer: this gang relies not on the magic of the internet, but of, er, magic, to rob banks, giving their ill-gotten gains to their audiences in a charming Robin Hood-esque gesture. A weird meeting of The Prestige and Hustle, don’t expect subtlety, but marvel instead at the sorcery on offer in this summer blockbuster.

The World’s End

Friday 19^th July

Director: Edgar Wright

Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Rosamund Pike

The third and possibly final collaboration between Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz writers Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright sees a group of old friends reunite in their home town to finish off a bar crawl started years before. However, judging by the huge explosions and glowing blue eyes observable in the trailer, all is not what it seems. Former collaborator Nick Frost is back, along with Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine and Eddie Marson, who head a stellar British cast. Judging by previous offerings, we can look forward to loopy characters, brilliant humour, true bromance and plenty of melodramatic action sequences.

Does Gru make you grin, or do you like Mike? Magic fan or man of steel? Share your thoughts and the films you're looking forward to in the comments below. Make sure that cinema trip happens, and send a subtle hint to your friends by sharing this post on Twitter or Facebook, and follow the blog for more film articles, summer posts and general snippets of joy.

The Queue-rious Nature of Queues

'I don't care if we're eighty years early, we are getting those
One Direction tickets!'

There has been a vicious rumour circulating about us Brits that needs correcting right now. No, I am not talking about the bad teeth, bumbling speech or general propensity to be evil attributed to us by American TV. Let’s get one thing straight: Britons do not like queuing.

No sane person likes queuing. Whether it’s in a shop, on the road or at a theme park, queues, like rain and taxes, are perceived by Brits as an inevitable part of life, but not as a joy. It is probably this acceptance that makes others think we enjoy waiting in line. While people from other countries might refuse to adhere to such a system, we are willing to go along with it, we’ll just grumble and moan in the process.

If we're not careful, queues can becomes unpleasant reflections of one’s life, as the unending state of limbo stretches into a metaphor for existence. Neither in one place or the next, stuck waiting to fulfill our true purpose, we watch the people around us also striving for the same goal, reaching it before us or following in our footsteps, everyone silently agreeing to conform to this system that takes a chunk of our life in exchange for achieving a particular end.

Once you have entered The Queue, your concept of time changes. Restricted by your status as part of The Queue, you are no longer free to choose what to do with your time. You forget what it was like to not be in this queue, and you suddenly find yourself unable to imagine that a time exists beyond it, that one day you will not be standing here, waiting for that person to count out every single penny in circulation, or for the engineer to fix the rollercoaster. For the first time, you are forced to obey Yoda and countless self-help gurus, and to live in the moment. Unfortunately, the moment you are trapped in is one of frustration, doubt and boredom.

The Queue also screws with your concept of space. You may well have walked through or past the place where you are now queuing countless times, unheeded by the system you have suddenly signed on to, able to stroll nonchalantly about in a wild and innocent fashion. You may even have skipped a little. Now, however, you are blocked in, unable to move too far to either side for fear of losing your place and forfeiting your contract, while a few measly steps forward are now perceived as a victory. You look back wistfully on those blissful times of meandering lazily along, unstructured and unbound, and wonder how you could have taken that freedom to stride so boldly for granted.

At this point, you begin to make bargains. You will never take your spare time for granted again. You will spend every minute doing useful, important, adrenalin-pumping activities and carpeing the diem.  You will learn a language, go skydiving, hug a tree – all the things that you thought you would have time to do but never did, because before The Queue there was always the future. You will never neglect the freedom to move around at will again. You will roam freely about the earth, noting every individual step as a sign that you have the agency to control your own path, and the chance to follow it. Once The Queue has freed you, you will grab life with both hands and never spend another minute in such a limp, helpless state.

And then the customer before you takes their bags, the car ahead moves off, the theme park worker ushers you on to the rollercoaster, and all those lessons, all those promises, vanish into thin air. You have made it. You have completed your contract with the queue, sacrificed minutes or hours of your life and promised to be there, in that place rather than anywhere else, and you have been duly rewarded. Life goes on, The Queue is forgotten, and you forget what it was to be so restricted, and return to your routine.

Good training: the etiquette of train travel

The conga line was not warmly received by other commuters.

Ah trains, those magical machines that whisk you through the picturesque English countryside or a dingy Tube tunnel to a destination that would have been entirely unreachable without their superb assistance. Or just a five minute walk down the road. With their enclosed and limited space, trains force us to co-operate with each other. While the official station rules include helpful suggestions such as don’t run across the tracks or leave any baggage unattended if you would like it back in one piece, this reluctant union has also produced many unwritten rules.

A great many of these rules relate to seating, which is perhaps unsurprising given their crucial role in a train journey. The ugly truth is that everyone wants a seat, which turns the carriage into a battlefield. Of course, one of the unspoken rules is that certain people must be given priority. However, when the particularly frail OAP and obviously-pregnant lady have been cheerfully waved on to seats, it is an open playing field.

As the train pulls into the platform at a tauntingly slow speed, the crowd surges forward. There is a quick, tense moment when everyone guesses where the doors will stop, and a sweet, smug sense of victory when they stop with the space down the middle directly in front of you. Of course, because this is Britain and we are fine-tuned to obey announcements given out in an authoritative voice over a loudspeaker, we grudgingly let the people off the train first, tutting at anyone who barges on ahead. However, when the last suitcase has been dragged across the gulf between train and platform, the starter gun has effectively been fired, cuing a mad scramble for position.

The first seats to go are the window seats, because why stare a piece of wall when you can stare at various sheep or a train tunnel. People travelling alone will head for the pairs, perhaps surreptitiously placing a bag beside them to mark their territory. Others will head for the fours, preferring to spread out over as wide a space as possible. And people on the Tube will sit anywhere, even if it’s that ledge at the back which is more of a challenge than a seat.

A person’s behaviour in a train reveals much about them. Do they sit on the seat furthest from the aisle, bag by their feet leaving the other seat free? Or are they the self-absorbed jock who casually slumps into the aisle seat, dumping his bag next to the window and plugging into his MacBook, seemingly completely unaware of the crowd of people gripping onto the handrail for dear life, silently glaring at his back? Everyone has seen this latter person, and either you are them, or you hate them and relish making them move over.

This battlefield is complicated by the presence of reserved seats. Clutching the precious reservations (valid only with ticket) that offer proof of their advanced organisational skills, the efficient passengers glance nervously around at the miscreants, those airheads who didn’t think to book in advance. As the train pulls in and the swarm begins, they either hang back, assured of their seat, or rush forward, determined not to let the organisationally-challenged reap the benefits of their forethought. That seat, in its prime window position, is mine, and I will argue with anyone who tries to claim it.

The claim to ownership is somewhat complicated if the reservation slips identifying the reserved seats are missing. This will ultimately bring it down to a game of resilience, with the victor settling back for a comfortable journey while the loser clutches the hand rail or sinks into a lesser seat and steams silently. All these battles must be waged in either absolute silence or exaggeratedly polite terms. To respond in any other way would be to reveal the unacknowledged malice that lurks beneath a supposedly casual train journey.

You have claimed your seat: what now? Most people on trains manage to entertain themselves, whether by gazing gormlessly out of the window or reading something which will, unfortunately, probably be Fifty Shades of Grey or some equally dismal equivalent. However, there are also those who are perfectly willing to disrupt everyone else in their quest for entertainment. These generally fall into three categories. Firstly, there is the unwitting disturber; this might be the person on the phone whose mundane conversation is being involuntarily followed by the entire carriage, or the person who has turned up the volume on their MP3 player so loud that someone three rows back and is wondering what happened to Muse on that fifth album. Then there is the chatty person who wants to tell you their life story before you escape to the delights of Melton Mowbray. “Where are you going? It’s been awful weather hasn’t it? Reminds me of the time I went to Scotland in 1979...” Short of feigning illness or deafness, this one is absolutely inescapable.

Finally, we reach the third kind, the group of disturbers. Generally formed of teenage girls or football fans, these will carry on conversations at a volume hitherto unknown to man and about things inane enough to bore a particularly stupid toad. Whether it be drunken ramblings or a two hour discussion of which side of the train the doors will open on at Peterborough (sadly a true story), these passengers will leave the rest of the carriage envisaging throwing them out of the window. Although they will probably just seethe silently instead.

For most people, trains are an unavoidable fact of life, and as such, it is better to be prepared for the mad scramble that that overpriced ticket will provide you. So get your fake smile and elbows at the ready: the train is now ready to depart.

Someone save us from our national anthem

No one had told Katherine about the group gym session.

During the weeks of the games, as is customary, those who were able found themselves standing for a variety of national anthems. From the unapologetically sentimental ‘Stars and Stripes’ of the USA, to Israel’s sombre ‘Hatikvah’ and the cheerfully resilient Polish 'Dabrowski's Mazurka', we have experienced a wonderful variety of anthems. Of course, for most of the spectators, the greatest enthusiasm was retained for the British national anthem.

Like everyone else, I was proud to honour all of the athletes, and particularly our own. I was lucky enough to watch Mickey Bushell speed to victory in the T53 100m race on 3rd September. Watching him on the podium receiving his gold medal, surrounded by thousands of fans abandoning British reserve and going absolutely beserk, was one of the most touching moments of the games. Like everyone else, I cheered, stamped, clapped and rose for our national anthem. However, while everyone else sung along with gusto, I remained resolutely silent.

It is not that I have anything against the Queen. In fact, I think she does a rather good job, particularly for someone who was born when cigarettes were good for you, cars were a luxury, and 'Wall Street Crash' sounded like a bizarre new dance craze. She even has a sense of humour, as shown by her recent Bond-inspired helicopter stunt and her taste in hats. I am sure that she is, as the anthem proclaims, also gracious, noble, happy and glorious. But I refuse to accept that one woman, no matter how elegantly poised and crown-bedecked, should be raised above the people in a nation simply because she was born into a family of unimaginable privilege.

A national anthem should represent the nation. The queen is not the nation. Although she is part of it, the people are a much greater part, and since this is a democracy, size matters. While the monarchy is seen as a symbol of Britain by the rest of the world, to praise them, and only them, in a song which stands for us all is inherently wrong. By requesting that she be 'Long to reign over us', we reduce ourselves to mindless, powerless subjects. The religious aspect of the anthem is also problematic, given that Britain prides itself on being multicultural and welcoming to people of all or no beliefs. We all deserve an anthem that includes us.

Our national anthem is over four hundred years old, meaning it was introduced when most British people believed that the monarch had a divine right to the throne, while they had been born into a life of poverty because God ordained it. This type of thinking has no place in what is supposed to be a modern, democratic and free-thinking society.

Of course, there are many who would purse their lips and shake their heads at such a flagrant disregard for Tradition and The Way Things Are. ‘Political correctness gone made,’ they would say, the hand clutching their bone china Diamond Jubilee mug visibly trembling in outrage. ‘It's been around for four hundred years. We can't just change it.’ To which I respond that while tradition has a time and place, such as around a May Pole, it is also important for us to recognise the changing times and move with them, particularly when the tradition in question affects the entire nation.

Four hundred years ago, people believed that women were intellectually inferior to men, the Earth was the centre of the universe, and that a little blood-letting was an all-purpose cure. We now know that these assumptions are wrong, and we have altered our thinking and actions accordingly. Our current anthem is a relic of the past and has an important place in history; let’s leave it there when we take our newfound patriotism and move into a future of inclusion and equality.