Do you pledge to fight 'blue sky thinking'?

August was a washout, September looks like getting half its rainfall in the first week! - Yes, I am talking about Britain here! 

There have been days this summer that caught us unawares and were warm enough for shirtsleeves. Days when the topic of conversation among strangers was 'how warm it is' (with surprise and pleasure). 

Oh, I am not really grumbling. I enjoy the rain, actually, especially good hard, lashing rain such as we have had tonight. Here in the dry East of England, that sort of rain is not as common as it is in the West. I have even been known to enjoy holidays in Cornwall and Wales when it seemed that the rain was set for a week. Sailing a small boat in the rain has a charm all its own ... the feeling that you can't get any wetter than you are already makes capsizing less of a disaster and baling does keep you warm. There is also the thankful knowledge that a bright driftwood fire will be burning in the grate and hot soup and wine are on the menu when you have dragged the boat up the shingle to its resting place by the wall. 

In between the showers, there is sunshine painting the clouds a dazzling white and bedecking every wet blade of grass and flower and iron railing with diamonds fit for a queen's tiara. 

Now, the clouds ... they are a sight to behold! I am thinking of joining the Cloud Appreciation Society whose manifesto states: 

"We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’ wherever we find it. Life would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day." 

Here in England, when we see a sky without a cloud, we become suspicious and wary and even shifty! Without clouds (in the daytime, at least) it is almost as if someone has taken the lid off our box and we have no way of judging the height of the ceiling. 

The Manifesto of the Cloud Appreciation Society avers that clouds "are Nature’s poetry, and the most egalitarian of her displays, since everyone can have a fantastic view of them ... They are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul. Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see in them will save on psychoanalysis bills." 

Do you love clouds (and rain)? Do you pledge to fight 'blue sky thinking' ... even if you are a member of the Woodcraft Folk, whose common greeting is "Blue skies!"? 

What do clouds mean to you? Have you looked at them from 'both sides, now, from up and down and still, somehow ...' you 'really don't know clouds at all'? Do you see your dreams ... and fears ... embodied in them - ever changing - as they march by?

(Cloud Appreciation Society Manifesto)