It's raining!

A facebook update from a friend altered us this morning to the fact that it was raining. Listening hard we could hear the cars driving slower in the streets as the swish of water under their tyres strikes fear into the drivers out on a Friday morning.
About 10 minutes later I have a pang of "oh no!" thinking that our white washing is out to dry. It's OK as the white washing has only just gone in the wash, Scotty reminds me. But I'm still not convinced and so go to the back room to look at the balcony. I was right about something, the dark washing that I did yesterday and hung out to dry last night is out there and being rained on.
What harm can rain do you might wonder? But here where the clouds are dark not from pending rain, but pollution, when the rain does come it must fall through this brown layer in the sky and so by the time it reaches us each drop is a dirty ball of water. I bring the washing in and even though it's hardly had a soaking I'm going to have to put it on a rinse cycle once the whites are done.
That'll teach me for trying to get ahead with the weekend chores!

EDIT: It's Saturday afternoon now and I've had to rush out to bring in the laundry AGAIN! It's chucking it down and to make it worse I dropped a pair of trousers onto the balcony below, so had to spend 10 minutes with a coat hanger and three shoes laces tied together to fish for it! So that load of laundry is on for the THIRD time this weekend. NOT PLEASED!