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It was trying to get my shopping bags back from the supermarket, along the darker reaches of the North End Road, that finally clinched it. A more Antipodean type may have whooped manfully and gone surfing on the great, looping waves of wet, scooped up by the tyres and hurled, with insensate malice, at the guiltless passersby. I just cringed in the doorway of Superdrug and tried not to snarl at the Happy Snap of the girl in the beige bikini. Naturally, people grinned, dodged and hurried on, but our Blitz spirit suddenly made me want to be a German.

Really filthy weather - a flurry of snow or hail - can magically refigure the monotony of daily life. But English rain rarely does it for me, especially now it just hammers home the prospect of another British winter. Last year I promised myself I'd escape and I've just found the answer. A friend has left news of a house in Spain and at £60 a week - with a balcony and, on a clear day, mountain-top views to the sea - it sounds wonderful: a winter retreat, that place under kinder skies to finish a book which, worryingly, is due by Christmas. I should be there already.

I've also come up with an idea that might give me some food for thought - global restaurant reviews. I plan to turn myself into the Tolkien of the Tortilla, the Richardson of Rioja, the Hemmingway of ham. Well, at least I'll send back dispatches from the frontier of Andalucian cuisine and, if I have time, teach myself to cook a perfect paella and maybe plant an organic vegetable into the bargain.

My dreams are already populated by larger than life characters propping up the local bars, battles with corpulent mayors lining their coffers and their stomachs under the bunting of benefit-raising street parties and beautiful Doñas whispering sweet nothings behind strange doorways, as they promise to show me their castanets. I might even get some work done. In the meantime a trip to Vienna and then a friend's wedding in Istanbul is on the menu so, although I try, I certainly can't complain. The downpour suddenly looks almost cleansing….

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