Why I like the rain...

I’m one of those people who like the rain. Give me a summer storm or a gentle spring shower and I’m happy. A winter’s rainy day makes me feel insular and protected, an autumn storm on the very edge of comfortable danger. 

Of course I’m not so happy when wet weather spoils my day with a continuous deluge, and wet weather in Wales can bring me to the edge of cabin fever, but in general I like the rain. I think I must be a pluviophile, although I generally keep my clothes on.

As a child I loved puddles as all kids do I guess. I’d stamp through the water in my Wellington boots sending huge splashes showering outwards from my rubber-booted feet. When I became a teenager I’d trudge my way to school in a sullen downpour and stop at Cuttle Brook Bridge to gaze into the swirling brown waters below. Rugby was better on rainy days. There was something so liberating about skidding and splaying in a field of mud. I think that I’d have enjoyed life as a pig. 

The rain made me feel more alive, sharpened my senses, woke me up to a new set of experience,

For years I walked everywhere, as I didn’t drive, and getting soaked to the skin was just one of the things that happened. I liked the soddeness of it all, the rain driving into my face, the soaking dampness of my hair. Sometimes I’d be so thoroughly wet that it made my smile in a Gene Kelly way.

I must have been in my late forties before I really started using an umbrella.

These days I’d rather watch and listen to the rain from indoors. When the rain drums on the roof or dashes against the windows it seems I become a sailor in the storm, or a lighthouse keeper, or a crofter on a remote Scottish Isle. The sound of rain makes me imagine, it relaxes me, soothes me, lulls me into security – false or not, I don’t know or care.

I look out on the street light, the rain sparkling on the glass of the windowpanes, and see diamonds. In daylight the rain smeared glass turns the world to an impressionist painting, out-of-focussing the world, blurring and blending it until it becomes softer and easier to take.

Downpour, shower, torrent, deluge, cloudburst, sprinkling, smatter, squall, cats and dogs, nice weather for the ducks…

That’s why I like the rain.