THE thunderclaps are rolling round the office roof and a torrential five-minute downpour has brought some drowned rats in to start their shift.

It's a weekend in June. All over the country, there will be ftes, fairs and festivals depending for their success on good weather.

I've never quite worked out whether it is unbounded optimism, sheer cussedness, the stiff upper lip gene or utter stupidity which makes us rely so heavily on outdoor events in a country where we don't have a climate, just weather and possibly a variety of it on any given day.

Any organisation with access to a field, a large garden or a village green has an outdoor event firmly in its summer calendar and depends on it to raise a good chunk of the outgoings in the following 12 months. Yet the whole thing can go sailing down the Swannee on a tide of raindrops and, even if it can be moved indoors in time, it's never as successful as a good outdoor bash.

Why we don't say "...in village hall (if fine, in vicarage garden)" on posters instead of "if wet, in village hall" I'm not sure. It would be more practical and we might appreciate the good days more instead of dreading the bad ones.

Yet, 24 hours before writing this, I, too, stood on a village green, behind a stall, thinking what a wonderful institution the garden fete was.

The day had dawned overcast, but warm, and no rain was forecast. Sir went off to help set up while I baked. After lunch we arrived on the green to one of summer's most magical smells - warm grass slightly trodden and broken by the setters up of tents and stalls. It's a smell known only to the helpers, because it is lost in the first bustle of customers, but it says all they need to know: fine and dry.

The sun was still hazy but, in proper garden party mode, I'd piled my hair under a wide-brimmed straw sunhat and added the long earrings such hats demand. Forget the floaty dress, however, the mode ended at the neck in a more pratical T-shirt, jeans, flat lace-ups and lots of factor 30, hazy sun burning just as efficiently as the cloudless sky variety.

We were, I thought, over-close to the pop group for my eardrums but my luck was in. They played 1950s and 1960s hits, the stuff of our misspent youth. We heard the folk dancers, and the "behind yous" from the Punch and Judy, but saw nothing of anything for the press of customers. For three hours, we sold busily, not even stopping as we drank the tea brought round twice by those who know sellers don't see the next stall, never mind make it to the tea tent.

With no need to avoid showers or a chill breeze, fete-goers lingered long after the usual drift-home hour, enjoying the sort of heat they've normally endured airport lounges and cramped flights to find.

I don't know the final total raised but it's bound to dwarf last year's, when a wet week and a dismal Saturday forced the event indoors.

On our stall, we reckon we took more in the first hour than we took during the whole event last year.

Yes, when a garden fete hits the weather jackpot, it's one of the best events around. It must be eternal optimism that it will be a fine day that makes us face our ftes.