Summer rain

Last summer, it rained almost all the time, and the river Severn that flows by outside our window was over its banks and depositing mud everywhere for weeks on end. This summer we decided to put our motor-home on a site in Cornwall and go there whenever the weather was forecast to be good. The consequence of this strategy is that we have spent most of the last three months living in Cornwall.

Finally last night, it rained. After weeks of unbroken sunshine, I resisted the urge to run naked across the fields yelling strange incantations to the weather Gods, but it was a close run think. It being one in the morning might have had something to do with staying in bed, but maybe it was because there really wasn't very much rain, at least not at first.

Sleeping in a motor-home in a field in Cornwall does exaggerate the sound effects, every single drop of rain makes it's own individual sound, adding something to the impression created, so that a light sprinkling of a few drops sounds like a tropical storm. On the other hand, rain is rain, and we have not had any here since some time in May. This is possibly an exaggeration, but it feels very unusual for this pattering sound on the roof to go on, as it has now, for at least fifteen minutes. This constitutes a monsoon by comparison with the previous two months.

It could of course have been a dream but that seems unlikely because I appear to have been awake enough, some time in the night, to have gotten up and written the preceding paragraphs.

There is something soporific about the patter of rain on the roof. Paradoxically it wakes you up when it starts, and then sends you back to sleep if it goes on. The upshot of that is that I have no idea how long it continued.

This morning it is clear and sunny again. It is just possible to convince oneself that the grass is a shade greener. It was looking very parched and straw coloured yesterday; a hint of green makes the world seem fresher and the sunshine a little brighter, or maybe it is just that the rain has cleared the dust from the air and it really is clearer and the air does smell sweeter.

After the traumas of last year it is in some ways deeply satisfying to rediscover that summer rain has it's good points.

As I am about to post this a thought occurs to me, I don't seem to have written anything here since April, so let this be proof that living in a field in Cornwall is not incompatible with blogging, it just provides other distractions.