A mizzle a day keeps the shearers away

There is an Exmoor saying that seems to be particularly pertinent this week: "If you can't see Dartmoor, then it's raining.  If you can see Dartmoor, it's about to rain."  This morning as I walked across the heather, I could barely see Exmoor – and I was standing on it.

Reminding myself that the needles of horizontal rain are good for my skin tone and that the liquid running down my face is in fact not blood, I ponder on the weather.   According to common dogma, Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow (not actually correct, but never let the truth get in the way of a good 'factoid'), and so we have many ways of talking about rain: drizzling, mizzling (down here), pouring, sleeting, spitting, sheeting … and a plethora of incredibly inventive euphemisms: raining cats and dogs, or stair-rods.  Pissing it down.  And my personal favourite from my friend Kay, it's toad-strangler weather.

So here I am, trudging across the sopping landscape.  The sheep and cows are tightly tucked under the hedges out of the wind (common sense from inordinately daft animals), but I have to take three keen and bright-eyed dogs for a walk, twice a day, whatever the weather.  Bedraggled and dripping, oh the joy they get from finding the muddiest pool to roll in (then almost smiling, they wait until they are in the house before shaking themselves off, and for the rest of the day lie contentedly steaming 'aromas of the moors').

While they run around in naked abandon, I look like a walking tent.  Boots, leggings, waterproof jacket, hat – all to keep the rain out, while my trapped body heat ensures that I arrive home completely drenched anyway.  And it all has to be done right – the jeans go in the boots, the leggings outside (otherwise you end up with boots filled with water – see, I have less common sense than the sheep), and the jacket pocket tabs must go on the outside, otherwise you end up with pockets filled with water in which your mobile phone floats about (that day Ian M had even less common sense than me, but unfortunately, it was my mobile that died an ignominious death at his hands).

But hey, the good news is that by September, it may stop raining.  We can take out the garden table just in time for a BBQ before we pack it away again for the winter.  And we will be pathetically grateful for it too.