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

Part of the explanation of why it looks the way it does is that it was built in a sunny part of the world.

At a much more down-to-earth level, the Alhambra looks very different from Versailles or Buckingham Palace and, though there are all sorts of complex cultural reasons for this, part of the explanation of why it looks the way it does is that it was built in a sunny part of the world.

R. Irwin, The Alhambra (2004), 127

The absolute black of the sky dulled and dimmed

The absolute black of the sky dulled and dimmed and blanched slowly away, and finally half a dozen daubs of cloud, dull powder pink, sailed high in a pale-green sky, rust-red at the horizon.

M. Robinson, Housekeeping (1980),117