Treading vigilantly to avoid stepping foot first into pools of muddied water swirling on the perforated pavement, the rain spitting in my face, taunting, goading me about my helplessness against the weather, it when I finally began to feel a sense of irritation towards the infamous British weather, whose vicious temper and fickle nature I had not, until now, like a capricious woman one has married blissfully for a month, seen in such clear relief. Rain was merely one of her noxious tricks ('it' has to be female; would you associate such traits with a male?) and it was already proving to be one of her most favoured.
Like a tantrum, lately, rain has erupted most impulsively at all times of the day, sometimes disappearing in a flash, and sometimes casting its bleak pallor over everything for days. With such a variety of rain, as there are so many varieties of sunniness (the same sun that broils the Mediterranean peoples their olive brown hue also, in other climes less kind, turns everything under the sky into some variant of beef jerky) , it is not difficult to imagine that there be a plethora of moods associated with each one.
On the rain scale of 1 – 5 (it could have been from 1 – 10 but I was not imaginative enough to think of that many moods):
1 Gentle Sheets of Rain, cascading down from the heavens like ambrosia to a tingling dry land
The rain that makes one feel alive, that affirms our world is not indeed being hurt (gosh, I had to think of the most tender word for 'destroy' I knew, to match the mood) by having the reality sucked out of it in a Adolf-Eichmann-execution (okay so I couldn't help it here) way. It is the rain that people rush out of their homes to embrace (possibly also bursting out in song; very The Sound of Music) and pirouette in their finest clothes with all their loved ones without catching pneumonia afterwards. The rain that people hope will never go away (but will become sick of when they need to go to work. But people in The Sound of Music never need to go to work). Naturally, tremendously enjoyable, with the added bonus of usually stopping after about 30 minutes.
2 Lashings of Rain with a lightly overcast sky and a homogenous sheet of fluffy clouds hanging underneath
The philosophical rain, where the gentle drumming of raindrops on the window is so continuous and hypnotic that upon hearing it (when you have nothing to do. This is going to become a common thread, because people observe the rain only when they have nothing to do) your mind starts to unravel like a badly-knitted scarf into the individual fibres of its representation until the emptiness left finally describes one's being; exactly the sort of thought that develops during such a shower. One tends to sink into a somewhat melancholy mood, rain being associated in general with unhappy moods and trawling one's memories to recall the sadder ones. It is something to get one contemplative and to perhaps write down more 'thoughtful' (it must be admitted that one person's thoughtful is another's humdrum) things that one normally would. Also, such rain is very conducive for afternoon napping.
3 Buckets of Rain with a foul sky and spiteful, thumping winds
Rain that makes you want to stay indoors, raindrops crashing on the kitchen roof, the heater on, and the cat asleep in the blanket on the plush sofas, while one cheerily bustles in the kitchen pulling out tray after tray of wonderful ginger cookies (it has to be ginger cookies, nothing else cuts this image) whose aroma permeates to every atom of the house (also, it must be a house, with a nice tiled roof). One might also want to curl up in a blanket with a book and a mug of cocoa and sip the afternoon away. Homey, cozy and warm is the only means by which we can combat the menace of such a rain.
4 Whippets of Rain, every raindrop cruel and vicious
The rain that nature sends (not that I'm animist or anything; just flogging the metaphor) once in a while (or too often, really) to remind us of her capabilities. Rain that causes flooding everywhere and holds everything up, sending everyone into a rotten mood and destroying the remainder of the day that held that bit of promise. In the mornings it makes the rest of the day untenable. In the afternoons people take comfort that they need not deal with it for that long. At night it makes for really pleasant sleep. But of course, it always lasts a little too long. We sometimes miss this sort of rain because once in a while we like (in the way that we like people to tell us off) review our relationship with nature and natural phenomena.
5 Cataclysmic Rain, rain that ruins worlds (so this might be a bit of a logarithmic scale, yes)
The rain that only comes at the end of the world (which, depending on your religious inclinations, might either be a time, or a place)
So I did exceed my seven hundred word limit. But it's about rain; something we're going to be seeing until we see 5.
