Customer Letter: Why Did My Tour Include So Much Rain?

This month we received a letter from a guest named Sir Tiddles of Willow Road, who attended our Spring Morning Special.

Dear Window Seat Wildlife Tours. I booked your premium morning tour expecting birds. It rained for three hours and I saw nothing but drops. I would like to know what I paid for.

Our response

Dear Sir Tiddles,

Thank you for your feedback. We are sorry to hear that you were disappointed. However, we must point out that rain is wildlife, in the sense that it is outdoors and it moves.

What you saw

During the three hours of your tour, you observed approximately two thousand raindrops, each travelling down the glass at a different speed. Some stopped halfway. Some merged with others. Some raced one another, and one of them, known to our staff as Gerald, won.

What you missed

It is true that there were no birds. The birds were sensibly inside, sheltering in a hedge. Our naturalist Juniper Fitch observed that this demonstrated their intelligence, and noted with some admiration that they had left you to sit in the damp and think.

Our weather policy

• We do not control the weather
• We do not apologise for the weather
• We do offer a complimentary biscuit to guests who sit through the weather
• We have not seen a guest request a refund in the past three years, which suggests that satisfaction is high

A note on drops

For the benefit of future guests, we have drawn up a short ranking of the raindrops seen from our window:

• Fast and straight: admired, but predictable
• Slow and wobbling: the crowd favourite
• Two that merge: considered a minor event of great emotional weight

We recommend choosing a drop at the top of the glass and following it down. Juniper Fitch has done this since lunchtime and reports that it is going well.

An invitation

We hope you will return for another tour. If the weather is fine, you will see many birds. If the weather is poor, you will see drops, and we guarantee that at least one of them will be interesting.

Yours faithfully,

Commodore Barnaby Whiskerley

P.S. Monocle wishes to add that he enjoyed the rain, though he cannot say why.