Three Men in A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

“Wasermarrer?” he observed, sitting up.

“Get up, you fat-headed chunk!” roared Harris.  “It’s quarter to ten.”

“What!” he shrieked, jumping out of bed into the bath; “Who the thunder put this thing here?”

We told him he must have been a fool not to see the bath.

We finished dressing, and, when it came to the extras, we remembered that we had packed the tooth-brushes and the brush and comb (that tooth-brush of mine will be the death of me, I know), and we had to go downstairs, and fish them out of the bag.  And when we had done that George wanted the shaving tackle.  We told him that he would have to go without shaving that morning, as we weren’t going to unpack that bag again for him, nor for anyone like him.

He said:

“Don’t be absurd.  How can I go into the City like this?”

It was certainly rather rough on the City, but what cared we for human suffering?  As Harris said, in his common, vulgar way, the City would have to lump it.

We went downstairs to breakfast.  Montmorency had invited two other dogs to come and see him off, and they were whiling away the time by fighting on the doorstep.  We calmed them with an umbrella, and sat down to chops and cold beef.

Harris said:

“The great thing is to make a good breakfast,” and he started with a couple of chops, saying that he would take these while they were hot, as the beef could wait.

George got hold of the paper, and read us out the boating fatalities, and the weather forecast, which latter prophesied “rain, cold, wet to fine” (whatever more than usually ghastly thing in weather that may be), “occasional local thunder-storms, east wind, with general depression over the Midland Counties (London and Channel).  Bar. falling.”

I do think that, of all the silly, irritating tomfoolishness by which we are plagued, this “weather-forecast” fraud is about the most aggravating.  It “forecasts” precisely what happened yesterday or a the day before, and precisely the opposite of what is going to happen to-day.

I remember a holiday of mine being completely ruined one late autumn by our paying attention to the weather report of the local newspaper.  “Heavy showers, with thunderstorms, may be expected to-day,” it would say on Monday, and so we would give up our picnic, and stop indoors all day, waiting for the rain.—And people would pass the house, going off in wagonettes and coaches as jolly and merry as could be, the sun shining out, and not a cloud to be seen.