Ahead of the Rain

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe week began without fuss, which I'm choosing to read as a good sign. Last night's United result had left me somewhere between mild and resigned. A draw gives you nothing to celebrate and nothing quite to mourn, like a parcel marked "out for delivery" that then never turns up. I woke still turning it over, then let it go, on the grounds that a second look wasn't going to change it.

Work was gentler than I'd braced for. Rounds were done early, before the morning had made up its mind about anything, and I had the unfamiliar feeling of being ahead of the day rather than chasing it. That held until the afternoon, when clinic settled in for the long haul. It was a steady, unbroken run, and no single patient was difficult. There were simply a lot of them, one after another, for a long time. By the end the room had that dry stillness a full afternoon leaves behind, and I noticed I'd stopped hearing the air conditioning some hours earlier.

Outside, the weather had ideas of its own. Rain was coming down hard over Subang, the sort that turns a road into a river and every driver into a nervous philosopher. I've learnt, slowly and at some cost, that the trick with heavy rain in the Klang Valley is not to be on the road when everyone else is. So I left early and got home ahead of the worst of it, watching the brake lights from the dry side of a window instead of the wet side of a windscreen. It felt slightly smug. I allowed it.

Once home, the first job was the NFL scores, which I went through in the order they'd finished, like someone opening the post. A few results were what I'd expected and a few weren't. There's an odd comfort in reading about games you didn't watch. The outcome is settled, and nobody can let you down any further.

That left Reacher, and the final season at that. I've been with the show long enough that its ending carries a little weight, though it has never been one to make a fuss about itself. A very large man arrives, a local unpleasantness is politely explained to him, and matters resolve along the lines you'd expect. I watched with the rain still going outside and no reason to be anywhere else, which is more or less the whole appeal.

Not much to report, and I'm fine with that. The week has started, the traffic was avoided, and somebody in a fictional town got what was coming to them. It'll do.