Signs and Portents

After weeks of downpours, and overcast, unseasonably mild weather (does the word "unseasonably" really have any meaning now, I wonder?), a sudden burst of January sunshine yesterday afternoon revealed some oddities and anomalies wrought under cover of wetness. Streams and pools of water that have appeared where there were none before, rain that has seemingly permanently etched itself into a plate-glass window, and – perhaps the most alarming portent so far – a tree that appears to have given its shadow the slip.