THE overpowering feeling I experienced during the emotion-laden hours when the Union Jack came down in Hong Kong last week was of being wet.
June 30th was the type of day which the British author Muriel Spark described memorably in Territorial Rights as "a really bad day with dark rain snivelling continuously and sympathetically from a dirty sky
Whom it was sympathetic to on this occasion - the British or the Chinese - was academic to those of us huddled under inadequate umbrellas on top of the open press stands watching the final British farewell as darkness fell. To leap from Muriel Spark to Matthews gospel: "He sendeth rain on the just and the unjust."
Spare a thought for the bands men and children who squelched in pointless formations through the inch-deep puddles, and The Irish Times correspondent so rain-sodden that he had to stand for half-an-hour under a lavatory hand-drier before the midnight transfer of sovereignty, first this way, then that, then back against the wall with sodden trousered legs held high to catch the hot air.
In the humid heat outdoors in Hong Kong's subtropical climate, wet clothes are merely uncomfortable; in the ice-cold air-conditioning, which makes this city an indoor Antarctica, they can be lethal.
Even in the hallowed hall where the handover took place rainwater from a flawed ceiling dripped continuously on my notebook and on the heads of many a consequential personage.
And the worst was to come. In the early hours of Tuesday morning, as I positioned myself under a corrugated iron bus shelter by the Prince of Wales Barracks to await the arrival of the Chinese troops, it began to rain like I have never seen before in my life - except, perhaps, at a never- to- be- forgotten Ulster GAA final in Clones many years ago.
It swept in from Victoria Harbour in grey sheets, obscuring the glass towers of Central and Wanchai behind us. This is what Chaucer meant when he wrote: "Lord, this is an huge rayn! This were a weder for to slepen inne!"
It sure was. But this was the one day in the year when soldiers and reporters had to be up and about at dawn. Before the eyes of a ragged bunch of journalists and photographers, a little park became a knee-deep lake. Big waves rose the bay and perilously rocked a ferry moored nearby. The wind- driven rain gushed through every hole in the so-called bus shelter.
The sodden mainland soldiers arrived an hour and a half late, just at the precise moment that the (once-Royal) Hong Kong Observatory was issuing a "black rain" warning on radio and television.
An official there later told me they have three colour codes for rainfall and possible flooding: amber" for alert, and used internally only; "red" to advise people that 50mm (almost two inches) of rain has fallen in the previous hour or less; and "black", when I00mm has come down in the previous two hours or less. The "black" warning extended from 7.40 to 9.40 that morning.
It was the first black rain of the year and it coincided exactly with the entry of the People's Liberation Army into the territory, Was this an omen or what?
The PLA officers might find an intriguing echo of the day's events in King Lear:
That, Sir, which serves and seeks for gain, And follows but for form,
Will pack when it begins to rain, And leave thee in the storm.
And it did not stop. All week it poured down monotonously. The observatory recorded the worst rainfall of the century for the period. From Monday to Thursday a record 349 mm (14 inches) of rain fell on the observatory in Tsim Sha Tsui, almost the average for the whole wet month of June.
The South China Morning Post on Friday published a front-page forecast which began: "Sick of the rain? Too bad. There's more to come." And it speculated that El Nino was to blame.
El Ninos, which result in the irregular movement of warm surface ocean water, occur every two to seven years and affect world weather patterns. There were mild El Ninos in 1991-2 and in 1993-4. However, the current El Nino is shaping up to be one of the strongest on record. It is expected to cause drought in Australia and more flooding in south-east Asia.
So there is a possible scientific reason for the deluge which greeted Chinese sovereignty. Perhaps it was not an omen of any kind, just a South China Sea depression stuck over Hong Kong because of a perverse El Niao- effect.
"Into each life some rain must fall," wrote Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. "Some days must be dark and dreary."
Yes, but the day that Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule was ridiculous.