Tag Archives: weather

I’m writing this on a very rainy morning. It’s a Saturday. I’m writing this at my desk which is next to my window, with the windows open a little bit. The rain is beating against the window and I can hear the gutters gurgling and the remaining leaves in the tree roaring in the wind. It’s dark, murky, and misty. The surrounding hills are shrouded in mist as the rain pummels this little seaside town.
And do you know what? I absolutely love it. And I always have done.
Rainy days have always felt special for me. Ever since I was a kid, I knew that a rainy day would be a day when you didn’t have to go outside at lunch time at school, that you would be able to sit inside and be creative with bits of paper or, in my case, write stories. I loved writing stories when I was a kid and a day which passed without the opportunity to do this was always a sad day. Rainy days were special.
And as I’ve grown up, a really horrible rainy day has still felt special, even though I’ve worked in shops for years and rainy days are bad news for the retail sector. Every time it gets gloomy and starts raining, I feel an urge deep in myself to sit at a desk next to a window and just write. It’s what I’m doing right at this very moment.
I’ve often wondered why this is. I was never an athletic child, so I never felt the need to go and run around a playground, or play football, or to be all manly and masculine with all the usual accoutrements of the sporting elite. For me, true prowess came with a pen and paper and the imagination, and the rain helped me to do this. I’m like one of those formula one drivers who always does well when it rains, I felt. A rainy day has always been a special day.
I’ve always had an affinity with the rainforest. I’ve always wanted to visit that place in Venezuela where they have thunderstorms every afternoon. Not for me the holidays spent in the sun lying on a beach, I’d much rather be somewhere rainy, like when we were kids and we’d go down to Bognor and sit in a car on the edge of the beach, with the windscreen wipers wining, looking out at the angry sea as the rain fell. The rain pummelling on the car roof. Those were ideal holidays.
So that’s why I writing this. Because it’s raining. And soon it will brighten up, which is a shame. One of the songs I’ve always hated is that one which goes ‘I can see clearly now the rain has gone’. I’ve always found that a really depressing song.