“Will there be rain?” I asked mid-week, under cloudy skies.
“Hopefully,” people said.
But the day wore on and the clouds cleared. It had been forecast with a 30% chance, whatever that meant. I’m never sure if that is a probability of it happening right here, or the rough percentage of a given area that might get some precipitation. That day the grey gave way to brilliant shining azure.
I didn’t want baby blue, or crystal clear, or the palest topaz. I wanted those greys to deepen and darken and exhale. I wanted rain. I wasn't alone.
We have a contrary relationship with rain in this country. We’re always – and I mean ALWAYS – complaining about there being too much or not enough or it’s in the wrong place, or it’s the wrong kind.
It’s a British thing: we object to weather. Or maybe it's a love-hate relationship.
Whatever the weather, we’re not going to be happy. But perhaps we secretly adore its bad-boy unpredictability. We love dramatic skies, even as we're hoping we don't get caught in the downpour. We savour sitting outside, even as we're grouching about hosepipe bans and watering cans. Wind is either annoying, or briliant drying weather, depending on whether or not we have washing on the line.
Sometimes, though, it is extreme enough to remind us that something is changing.
Something I wrote in my journal one morning this week: I hope we remember the discomfort of this - meaning the heat and humidity - in a few months’ time when we’re complaining about the cold.
I might add to that: I hope we remember the skin-kissed joy and the relishing of this – meaning the eventual arrival of rain – in a few months’ time when everything is dank and drear and sodden.
Because, finally, it rained.
Not on that day of grey clouds. A few days later. But oh, the bliss of water falling from the sky!
In the meantime, we had talked about what we would do when it arrived. I wonder how many of us did what we said we might.
On the day in question, mid-afternoon clouds cleared away, and I was not expecting anything to come of the forecast. I was watching TV in the late evening when I heard an insistent drip beyond the gable wall – my heart leapt – a gutter not coping maybe – or the direction of rainfall hitting the window. A sudden thrill that, just maybe, it was actually raining. Real rain, not just a half-hearted drizzle or a spat of droplets.
It was raining. Real, drenching, earth soaking, down-pouring, beneficent rain.
I went to the back door, and stepped out into it…
…barefoot, vest and shorts, and simply stood for a while on the deck in a gentle waterfall, that caressed skin, washed hair…
…the sky was cloud-scaped, tumultuous…
…the garden thirsted, and the sky responded…it seemed to say ok, if that’s what you want, and moved beyond a gentle falling into a drenching throw-down, almost spiteful in its intensity, is this what you want? it seemed to say, and to be fair, the land may have answered yes please.
I walked up the back end, the flagstones finally cool beneath my feet after weeks of scorching, and stepped onto the crunch-space that used to be a lawn, of sorts, greenery anyway – now brittle and brown and pretending to be dead.
I stood on the earth and let the rain wash over me. I had an inkling of how it must be in those countries where half the year is drought and the monsoon is welcomed in dancing and festivals. I wondered if that is where we are headed. We’ve had droughts in these parts before – worse ones than this – but those were believed to be one-offs, whereas now there is a sense that this may become the norm. And we are 'not designed for this’. As a people, in these isles, we do not have a tradition of building for such conditions. We do not have a culture that works around the cooler parts of the day, and rests in the heat. We have yet to build in water-conservation and appropriate dispersal as a norm. These are things we may be needing to learn.
We need to learn to build deep walls that keep out the heat of summer and keep in the warmth in winters. We need to learn that the seasons are more extreme than we are used to...that winters may by colder, wetter, and summers hotter and dryer, and the shoulder seasons shorter than we're accustomed to them being. We need to learn that storms and floods happen when one extreme slams into the previous one, and that will become more and more frequent.
Our gentle moaning-about-it-all equilibrium has been up-ended and we need to deal with that, because increasingly weather will be a genuine hooligan in the neighbourhood - not its fault, but that won't help when we're dealing with the consequences of our inept parenting of the planet.
So we will have to learn to prepare for long hot summers, plant and conserve accordingly.
And maybe we will also learn to dance in the rain. To appreciate its coming. To capture it.
I need to look at my guttering…and water-butting…which is completely inefficient, too much goes straight to drainage, but in the meantime, every large bucket I have sat out on the deck.
When I came in from my rain-bath, I went to an open window. I switched off all the lights in the room, raised the blinds, and simply stood by that opening into the night. I watched the streaming waterfall in the light of the street-lamp over the road. Listened to the steady drip-drip-drip where my guttering failed, scented the sage beneath the window giving up its heart-felt thanks for the blessing of water. I looked to the golden rod that normally stands ram-rod straight up, and saw how it had opened from the centre of the stand, individual stems leaning backwards, out and down, the whole
opening like a star-shaped flower, to receive rain to its centre.
There was something so primal in all of this.
A couple of days later, the roses begin to trust the Summer again, tentatively putting out a few more buds. The grass thinks about greening, but some strains are still more reluctant than others. The desiccated lawn is abundant with grasshoppers – do they actually prefer these conditions?
Referring to our group chat, a friend commented “it’s amazing how excited we can get about a bit of rain.” Perhaps it is time that we all learned to get excited about a bit of rain, because the likelihood is that we will be facing these hot, dry summers, more and more.
In the middle of the week, we learned that one of our local heaths was ablaze. There was a time when the idea of a wildfire in the these damp, foggy, isles would have made no sense…but here we are. The world is changing and we need to change in response to it.
Full disclosure: I love the long hot summer days. I don’t mind my lawns retreating below ground to protect themselves. I thrill at picking peaches from my garden. I’ll work around what can and can’t grow in my herb beds and grow-bags and flower pots.
But I do also know that it means the heaths may catch fire, that some of our common species will be forced further north, until there is no 'further north' to go, that weather systems are destablising, that my beloved coastline is shifting, falling, changing.
Everything changes.
As is often the case, I am reminded of Springsteen lines: everything dies, and that's a fact, but maybe everything that dies, some day comes back...
Not everything, I feel, but my grass will green again, my roses will climb and bloom. For every long hot Summer, I'm sure I will be gifted a long, cold, wet Winter. And after that...who knows?
But for now...because I'm a strong believer in the 'now'...now I'm relishing that snap-close memory of standing in my back yard getting soaked in the rain. People talk of petrichor, the after-rain scent of earth, but I'm still reminiscing the actual rain-scent as it fell, as it touched my skin and the dried-out-earth at my feet...
...the scent of fresh water, untainted, un-designated, still its own unclaimed self, the innocence of rain before it lands.
