The rain it raineth every day

For three months, we have had virtually no rain. The papers reported every day that summer had never gone on so long. You may remember the official declaration of summer. For autumn to be declared, the daily average temperature has to be 22 degrees or less for three consecutive days. The warm balmy weather lingered on until two weeks ago when the temperature suddenly dropped, the leaves finally started to turn brown and fall off the trees and we tested our heating for the first time. Cue for the Chinese to start wearing down jackets and wrapping their children in hats, scarves and gloves. The foreigners merely added a jumper. The drop in temperature was swiftly followed by rain. A great deal of rain. It feels remarkably like London.

The headline of the 'Shanghai Daily' last week was "Ten more days of rain" after it had rained solidly for a week. Clearly, the English are in their element as they are able to talk about the weather incessantly and sport umbrellas at all times. What was more of a surprise is how much the Chinese seem to enjoy discussing the weather.

"Do you realise" said our driver "that the weather hasn't followed this pattern for 130 years?" "Er no, we weren't aware of that" said Jamie. "Well, it's true. 130 years ago, the weather was just like this". "Not 131 years ago? Not 140 years ago?". "No, 130 years ago, just the same". We laughed patronisingly until it occurred to us that the Chinese probably do have detailed climate records going that far back.

On the way to school, Eliot said "Mummy, do you know, the Chinese don't have umbrellas. They put plastic bags on their heads instead". It must be said, a fair proportion do.

Cross over the road my friend

Crossing the road in Shanghai. What can I say? I take my life in my hands (not to mention my children's lives) several times a day. There are a lot of junctions, all of which have traffic lights, not all of which are at convenient locations. Aside from the obvious perils of jay walking (do not try this at home), the situation in China is complicated by the variety of different vehicles you are competing with. Cars, buses, taxis, bicycles, electric bicycles, motorbikes; bicycles carrying heavy loads of - well, pretty much anything really; men dragging carts containing - well, pretty much anything really - bamboo scaffolding, entire contents of house, vast quantities of recycling. You get the picture. These contraptions all progress at different speeds which means that you need an extraordinary amount of skill and anticipation to weave between them when there is no convenient place to cross the road. I would try a rugby simile here but I don't think I can carry it off.

Jay walking is a risk free business when compared with trying to cross the road when the green man walks. When the traffic lights show green to pedestrians and red to traffic, all traffic turning right is allowed to continue. This effectively means that instead of looking left and right when crossing the road, you are actually in need of a fully rotating head or eyes in the back and sides of your head to enable you to monitor whether or not it is actually safe to cross. Then see above for perils of crossing. Jamie has taken to marching across the road when the lights are red to pedestrians on the basis that the most dangerous thing of all is to cross when they are green.

The most difficult crossing I have to do on a regular basis is, ironically, a fully pedestrianised overhead crossing which goes across the expressway a block away from where we live and which I need to cross to get to the local park and many useful shops. There are escalators on this crossing but you have to go up four steep steps to get to the escalator (which may or may not be working) and then, having got to the top, it transpires that there is no down escalator. All fine if I'm on my own but not much fun when wielding Toby in a pushchair. I usually inch my way down the first few steps very slowly trying not to be unnerved by the audible intake of breath from grannies all over Shanghai as Toby dangles precariously at the top of a very steep flight of stairs. If you can't get help on the London Underground when negotiating the stairs, what help could I expect in Shanghai? Quite a lot it turns out. Yes, I did have two men carrying bicycles push past me last week muttering curses under their breath but I am almost always given help. This is surprising in itself given the traditional 'me' culture which is supposed to prevail here but what is more impressive is that more often than not, the lifting of the pushchair is preceeded by an impeccable "may I help you?". If only Londoners were so polite and helpful.