JUST WALKIN' IN THE RAIN...?

Outside, it's a wet and windy day. The rain lashes the streets with unrelenting fervour as, from my window, I observe a few bedraggled passersby scurry for shelter or in pursuit of some purpose know only to themselves. The sky is grey and ominous, clouds swirl overhead in regal, grim-meined majesty, contemptuously regarding us mere mortals as the lowly ants we undoubtedly are.

And that's the weather forecast for today.

However, cosily ensconced within the comfortable confines of my comics covered cubbyhole, I luxuriate in the warmth emanating from the radiator and concern myself with what pithy (no, I don't have a lisp), profound and poignant comments I can bestow opon my eager audience, who look to me to lighten and brighten their unbearable burden by bedazzling them with the wit and wisdom which so freely pours forth from my meaningful, methodical and monumental mind. 

Oh, what lucky people you are.

When I was a boy in Belmont, we had an outside

'garden cellar' (as did most of the houses in the street), in which we stored coal in one part and kept garden tools (such as lawnmowers and the like) in the other. (It was called a cellar even 'though it wasn't underground, but apparently the term is not misapplied in such circumstances.) On rainy days I would sit on a deckchair inside the bigger-sized half with the door slightly ajar, reading comics and listening to the rain pattering off the pavement and caressing the concrete roof under which I sheltered.

Even today, I find it a supremely calming experience to sit in a car in the rain and listen to the drops rattlling on the roof in their staccato, tinny-soundimg fashion. There is a wonderfully diverse quality to rain; when one is out walking in it, it invigorates, it refreshes, and it cleanses. Yet, when
one takes the time to regard its presence in quiet contemplation from the comfort of a dry haven, it also relaxes the mind and soothes the soul.

Sadly, refuge in the garden cellar of my youth is a couple of houses ago and many years in the past. However, I can still seek sanctuary in its shadows with one short step into the hallowed halls of memory. As Cicero himself said: "Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things."

Failing that, of course, I can always go and sit in my nice new acrylic garden shed and listen to the rain pitter-patter all around me, the door

half-open to allow me to watch it in silent awe.

******

Incidentally, the photo below was taken about twenty years ago outside
the very cellar mentioned, around twenty years after I had move from the house. How did I manage that, do I hear you ask? Ah, but that's a story for another time.