There's something I find soothing about the sound of a torrential rainstorm - water hitting the windows, dripping off the trees etc. The relaxing effect kind of goes off a bit when you realise some of the dripping is coming from down your hallway. Then after you've put a bucket under the bathroom light fitting to catch the water you can even feel a little tense.

I'm not a fan of mixing liquids with electricity - or computers for that matter - but it did stir a memory from my uni days at UEA in Norwich. I wandered into a lab in the School of Biological Sciences and paused to admire the computer they had in the corner of the room. This was 1981 so the computer was a proper one - the size of a double wardrobe with lots of blinking lights and a big tape drive on the front. But what really struck the casual observer was the corrugated, sloping roof bolted onto the top, the guttering and finally the downspout. It looked like a bizarre, hi-tech wendy house. Apparently the insurance company had insisted on it after the lab upstairs had flooded and written off the previous computer.