Not only is England rainy, it’s also drippy.

Normally, on a rainy walk through town, you’d probably duck under awnings or walk close to the building side of the street to avoid as much rainfall as possible. Well, this just isn’t possible in England. First of all there is no standard size awning, so you can never be sure you’ll make it under. And when you do, you run the risk of getting even more wet than avoiding the awning all together. You see, while awnings do something to shelter you from the rain, they do more to collect rain over time and then dump it all on you right as you walk underneath it. Second, you can walk as close to buildings as you want, you’re still going to get wet. The wind is the rain’s best friend. You’d be hard pressed to find a dry patch anywhere when it’s been raining – even the first 10 feet of floor of any given shop is swimming in water.

Besides the occasional awning, York (and the rest of historic England, I’m sure) is littered with quaint shop signs that hang over and onto the sidewalks; prime for dripping on passers by, which is exactly what they do. If you are like me, when it’s raining you keep your head down and you walk quickly. Your main goal is just to get where you’re going while accruing as little personal water damage as possible. Walking like this will definitely get you somewhere, but you won’t arrive without huge drip marks and soggy feet.

I mentioned to my boss this morning, how impossible it is to dress for the weather in this country. I told her I miss Canada because when you look at the thermometer in the morning and know how to dress for the day. Here, you can only dress for the first hour and what was a rainy day, turns into a dry windy day, turns back into a rainy day, turns into sunny day just in time for sunset.

The moral of the story, kids, is to always wear layers and never spend more than 10 minutes on your hair if you can’t get it wet.