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April 13, 2006

The Weather What I Wrote

What funny weather we’re having, eh? Rain, bits of sunshine and gusts of wind. Nothing funny about it, I guess. Or rather nothing unusual about it. Its just an expression. I like it anyway. The weather, not the expression. Although I don’t entirely dislike the expression but for the sentence in which I said "I like it anyway" I was referring to the weather.

We’re getting some good rain spells, aren’t we? The type that fall when your to far away from the house to go back and fetch your umbrella. I like that type the best I think. It spit’s a bit first. You wonder why you wore that jacket that doesn’t keep the rain off when it was clearly going to rain at some point. And then it does and what can you do, eh? Not much but keep walking. Keep walking and maybe it’ll stop. And it does. For a while at least. But when you come out of the bank it really starts to come down. Shhhhhhhh is the sound it makes. Shhhhhhhhhh. You wait in the porch of the bank with someone else. You watch as every one else runs from the streets. Even the cars seem to have disappeared. When the lights begin beeping for pedestrians you run out of the bank doorstep and you hear that other someone say "brave lad" as you run through the rain and into Penny’s to buy an umbrella. "You must sell a lot of umbrellas at times like these!" is what you think of saying to the girl at the till but you don’t. You rip the tag off the umbrella and open it up. Its not very big but then either are the drops of rain. Its only there are so very many of them.

Not to worry, you say. Nothing to worry about. By the time your near home it becomes apparent that this umbrella was designed for heads. To keep heads dry, because as far as you can feel, your soaking. The left sleeve of your jacket has got it the most but its seeping into your shoes too which is uncomfortable at first but then isn’t. When you get home you leave the umbrella in the porch to dry. You take off all your clothes and change into new ones. You don’t wish you had brought an umbrella. You wish you had never gone out in the first place. Yes, I like those types of rain spells. On certain days, very elusive and rare days the afters of a rain spell like that can rival the rain spell itself.

The sky has to be largely free of clouds, completely free really. And it needs to be blue. A bright blue or even, if your lucky to have just had a rain spell before twilight, a bright pink. With those conditions just right the roads shimmer blue and pink. The colours, locked in puddles and in floods and in everywhere the rain water has settled. The blues and the pinks bounce off walls and car bonnets and everything is still. Like a battlefield after a battle with the blood staining the ground. Beautiful. Those aftermaths and afters are worth happening upon. This wind we’re having - gusty, no? The winds got gusto I say. There are gusts of it. Hard to appreciate on a biting icy day, wind, but now its ok. When you walk out of a stuffy train or supermarket and right into it but its cold but what do you care, huh? Your warm! And the wind cools you. Its nice to walk in wind like that. Ah yes, rain, bits of sunshine and gusts of wind. Weather to walk in. To see. To run from. To love and hate. Funny weather some say when they mean unusual. And if that’s the case, if ‘funny’ should be substituted for ‘unusual’ then ought not the person be talking about when it rains frogs?

Downhill from here by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist

Posted by LiamG at April 13, 2006 10:11 PM