In Algy's opinion, the weather during the past week had been a wee bit disappointing… It was true that there had been occasional bursts of sunshine, and even one or two glimpses of blue sky, but it had been consistently cold, very windy, and often exceedingly wet, with dense Scotch mist obsuring the landscape much of the time.
And Saturday morning turned out to be even worse, with bursts of torrential rain driven by very strong winds. However, Algy was determined to try out his new umbrella, which his assistant had given him on the occasion of his birthday to ensure that he would have a rainbow on every day that it rained, even when the sky was completely overcast.
So he set out to find a place where the umbrella could be employed without risk of it flying away across the nearby ocean, despite the fact that with winds gusting to 50 mph this was not entirely straightforward… Eventually, however, Algy discovered a spot in his assistants' garden that was sufficiently sheltered from the roaring south-westerly, and as he settled down beneath his own personal rainbow on the wet grass, he was thrilled to find a beautiful snake's head fritillary growing right in front of his beak.
As he listened to the rain falling on his umbrella and the wind roaring in the trees, Algy had difficulty believing the weather birds' forecast for the coming week, for they were saying that a big change was coming, and that it would turn relatively warm and sunny by the middle of the week. Personally he thought that it was as likely that fishes would set up umbrellas when it rained as that the sun would shine for days on end, as forecast, but he was willing – indeed eager – to keep an open mind and hope…
When fishes set umbrellas up If the rain-drops run, Lizards will want their parasols To shade them from the sun.
[Algy is thinking of the nursery rhyme When fishes set umbrellas up from the book of nursery rhymes Sing-Song by the 19th century English poet Christina Rossetti.]
