Wind in the wires...

Storms, how quickly they build this time of year. Just a little sunshine and a slight rise in temperature seems to set one in motion. What is it they say? Three days of sunshine is always followed by a thunderstorm? I’d like three days of sunshine, even if a storm follows – besides it is Wimbledon fortnight, so it’s bound to rain.

Not that I don’t like rain. I love the rain, watching it that is. Sometimes, when you get that warm rain, I stand in it and allow myself to be soaked. Once, on holiday in Barbados, I stood in the rain of a tropical storm. I sheltered under a huge tree and after a couple of minutes my skin began to burn. The sap of the tree was poisonous, and I had been drenched in the stuff. God it stung for hours.

Storms, how exciting they are. I love a good storm and the rain that it brings with it.

Sometimes when I stand and watch that huge rain a storm brings, listening to it thumping on the road, I think: ‘I love the rain, I wish it would rain forever.’ But of course I don’t, I hate that droplety, drizzly rain that seems to go on and on making everything damp and cold.

A good storm (what a strange term) is such a satisfying thing, clearing the air and leaving behind that wonderful washed and washed away smell. One seemed to be coming the other evening. The sky went black as soot in the far horizon then quickly moved across the sky blotting out the blue as it moved towards me. The temperature dropped to a shiver and the sounds of the evening dulled as the leaden air expanded.

I stood in our road watching it form, listening to the numbness it was creating.

Now standing in the centre of the road isn’t a good idea. But as I stood there I heard above my head a gentle hum. The telephone wires were singing. It was a strange undulating whine, high then low like a badly tuned radio. I listened for about three minutes and then it was gone, fading quickly and quietly to silence. I’ve heard that sound before, always before a storm when the wind begins to whip up. It’s called Aeolian vibration – what a magical name. Aeolus was the Greek god of the winds and ruler of the island of Aeolia. In the Odyssey, he gave Odysseus a bag of favourable winds to help him on his journey.

I stood waiting for the rain to come, listening to the Aelian vibration, wondering if the storm would bring favourable winds or those other winds – the ones that blow the hope out of our sails, the ones that blow the stuffing out of you.

I waited, the wind in the wires humming.

The storm never did come. It blew over, and as the sky lightened I stood and wondered if I’d heard anything at all.