While you're drying your clothes, let me run through the ways in which we should count our blessings for the rain. First, I was walking one night last week down the darkened streets near Jiangsu Lu, on our way to the new French restaurant, Le Bouchon, as it happens. The rain allowed me and my companion to huddle together under the umbrella and I put my arm into his in what seemed like a perfectly natural way -- nothing fresh or forward about it at all. For other people walking about that night it was probably a miserable experience: for us, it was utterly romantic. Blessing two: do you know of any sound in the world more moving than rain on the window at night? Well, yes, so do I. But apart from that sort of sound, rain is right up there. Huddling under the warm bedclothes with or without a companion, and feeling the peace of the world wrapped in cloud and undergoing a heavenly cleansing operation. Sublime!!! A TRULY May-May moment. Blessing Three applies particularly to the hard-working taxi drivers of our city, who work so hard to ferry me (and less frequently, you) from one engagement and nightlife venue to another. When it rains during the week, business for our taxi comrades is good. On a weekend, there is less of a positive effect, they inform me, because people tend to just stay home. So stop complaining about the rain -- go for a walk with a suitable partner, then take a taxi home and huddle intimately. Such soggy fun! There's a silver lining behind every Shanghai cloud, you know!!!

I hear that Romanos on Huaihai Lu, the new nightclub which both opened and closed on December 30, may never re-open at all. Some sort of licence problem, I understand. WHAT a shame!! I was so looking forward to having ANOTHER haunt to add to my list.

Speaking of new places, I received an invitation to a new Swedish bar/restaurant called Club Gustaf, but the card I was given appears to have the wrong directions. I went searching in the rain for it, pressing close to my companion, as suggested above, but failed to find it. If you happen to bump into it, let me know.

A Concerned Reader has written to Aunt Daisy as follows: "Don't want to be acting nerdy, but don't you think that May-May needs to quit smoking?" A very good point, as the picture that accompanies my weekly report features a cigarette and a whisp of smoke. It is not a photograph, as you will no doubt has realised, and I have not been a smoker for some time. I seem to have given up the habit successfully, although I am painfully aware of the old line: "Giving up smoking is easy, I've done it dozens of times." Shanghai is not an easy city in which to break the nicotine habit, and I occasionally crave a cigarette, particularly after a moment of intimacy. Unfortunately in all areas of my life I follow Oscar Wilde: "I can resist anything but temptation." So, I could ask the Shanghai-ed graphic designers to remove the cigarette and the smoke, or we could leave it there as a memorial to the smoking May-May of the past. What do you think?