"What about this weather then?"

Stood on a rooftop in Bristol, hunting leaks, I look out across a sea of disfigured triangles, tethered flights of fancy by box-ticking architects, and I am a lone figure among the sharp shoulders of slate and tin.  Behind all, the sky glistens with grey as the rain mists in again, veiling everything, as if now being viewed through net curtains in dire need of a soak.

This is my weather.  (And, at the moment, I am being spoilt.)  It is the weather of the introvert, the lonely dreamer, the one who welcomes the quickening it introduces into everyone else’s step, and the reluctance it engenders to chat.  It panders to my default position, my Celtic compass, that draws me back, to the harsher, shaded, sodden fields of my youth. It brings me back round to myself, makes me put my chin down and the defences up, and ‘keep buggering on’.

Properly clad, I relish working out in the rain.  It transports me back to the tinkling, corrugated roofs of my youth, and the warm fire that the end of the day promised.  

“I am haunted by waters.” – Norman Maclean, 'A River Runs Through it.'

But I am lucky.  I speak from the high ground.  I retire every evening to the relatively dry south east, driving home on a thin ribbon of black past fields, and lives, slowly sinking into mercury. 

I have never known so much rain.

And I have just seen another low swirl predicted to sweep in next week.  (I wish I was in the umbrella business, the streets are littered with their broken skeletons.)

But rest easy, the government are at last taking it seriously.  Prime Minister Canute  has promised to stem the relentless tide. (oh no, sorry, that's immigrants.)

“Gad, it’s hot…  Around us is the Red Sea, a festering green sheet of un-skimmed molten brass.  You can grab a handful of air and squeeze the sweat out of it.” – Spike Milligan, 'Letters.'

But, if you need warming, be assured we have started our long journey back towards the sun, but only just.  The light still seems an age away.  But it's coming.  It always comes.  And surely this year it will appear brighter than ever.  (I certainly hope so, have just booked an Easter break in Somerset. )

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