Rain stops play

It's been a fairly miserable week here in Beijing, weather-wise. Lots of overcast, lots of humidity, lots of smoke (an official 'weather condition' in these parts: in the last few days, apparently, it was mainly due to farmers in the surrounding countryside stubble-burning after completion of the early-season harvest) - and on the few occasions when a clear-ish sky has appeared, the temperatures have zoomed ferociously too. Ah yes, and there have been occasional torrential spells of rain too, usually in the late afternoon or early evening. This is pretty much the pattern for the Beijing summer, from mid-June through till the beginning of September. But this week has been especially bad: so many days of clammy, oppressive greyness; the air chokingly polluted, visibility down to a few hundred yards; the sky but a memory, a rumour.

Today I was to have been going to an early evening garden party at the British Ambassador's residence. It was promoted through the local Oxford & Cambridge Club, although I'm not sure that it was entirely 'their' event. A bit too 'posh' for me, really; but the potential for fun had seemed to be there.... if the sun had shone.

Well, we had some sunshine earlier; but by mid-afternoon, it had turned grey and horrible again; and an hour or so before the party was due to start, the heavens opened. I assumed there would be 'wet weather' arrangements, although I don't think the flyer I was sent mentioned any; and an indoor event would be much less fun. And it seemed pretty likely that most of the guests would stay away in these conditions. The only part of the afternoon I'd really been looking forward to was a stroll over there - probably stopping off in Ritan Park along the way - but the gathering gloom (mine and the weather's) had put paid to that plan long before the downpour. It is next-to-impossible to get a cab in this town when it's raining. And I didn't really want to to be turning up for a hobnob with Sir William dripping wet.

All convenient excuses, as it happens. I had been losing enthusiasm for the event all weekend - having catastrophically failed to find myself a 'date' for it (I admit I am being something of a lovesick teenager, brooding morbidly over the wretchedness of my prospects with the lovely-but-uninterested Madame X) - and had been very half-heartedly making my preparations to go (ironing a shirt, would you believe?) when the thunder began to rumble out to the west; I waited hopefully for the rain to follow 10 minutes later, thinking to myself, "Hooray - at last I have a good reason not to go!"

Of course, that is now three networking events in the space of five days that I've chickened out of. Three strikes and you're out - I may never be able to show my face at one of these business mingly things again.

There is a problem here. My depression has deeper roots than just the relentlessly dreary weather or the soul-sapping ennui of the new job or the familiar agony of becoming smitten with a woman who thinks of me as lint (though these things are certainly bad enough to prompt an overflow of melancholy). Yes, this is a bad time of the year for me: I am still haunted by a bad thing that happened three years ago, and I fear my present extreme emotional flakiness and disinclination to sociability arise largely from the imminence of that anniversary.

Rain, rain, go away.......