167 words

...the enduring slight pessimism in british small talk exemplified by the dogwalker coming the other way on the track in the woods and nodding, then "Good morning" he says, "Nice drop of rain," for indeed it is lightly raining on us today AT LAST, and a mumbled reply of "Morning, yes," is found in my mental cardfile of acceptable small talk replies for emergency stranger interaction situations, then he has the temerity to add more and I don't know if I have enough cards in my deck to cope with it today but more is coming anyway, "If this keeps up my grass will keep growing and I'll have to mow it again!" he says, keeping walking past me now through a woodland struggling to keep any green at all in the verges under the searing sun of the last three or four drought weeks, but the miserable git found a way of turning the longed-for rains into a negative thing because This Is The British Way...