Rain was London’s benison, the absolution for its grit and dust

Williams liked rain. Sunny afternoons on a deckchair in Regent’s Park could be pleasant when he felt like nattering with admirers, but it was rain that he associated with poetry: ‘Caught in a shower of light rain: it was like a mountain mist descending.’ It pleased him that other people were deterred by wet weather, and that the pavements were cleared by a downpour, and that car headlights glittered and were refracted in the puddles, and that afterwards the streets seemed cleansed. Rain was London’s benison, the absolution for its grit and dust. 

C. Stevens, Born Brilliant: The Life of Kenneth Williams (2010), loc. 5,333