Rainy Wednesday

"One month's rainfall in the next forty-eight hours" the weather girl said on the news yesterday morning.  I knew our summer ended when March flew out.  Makes you want to stay in bed and catch up on your dreams - so you go to sleep and the dreams just chase you awake.

So you put on your face, do your hair, put on your coat and boots, get in the car and drive.  At the top of the hill you can see the blue sky hanging over Fawley - the oil refinery in the distance.  Try to hold onto the poetic words in your head as you drive - and then - sitting in Fareham town with a cup of coffee the words have all disappeared - so you look up at the window to the sky and see - sunshine.

Try to make the most of the moment by writing in a notebook - time to move on to working the new novel into something of a PLOT.  Picking at your brain-cells which seem to have gone into hibernation with the weather.  Struggle to write - then suddenly you realise that you've written three pages of something.  Put it away and don't read it back for at least a couple of days - then embellish it until it makes a story.

Driving back home, passing the river - you notice the banks are overflowing and the water's still rising.  The sun no longer shining and it's raining again.  But in the garden the birds are feeding, and singing as they feed.  Everywhere you look it's wet and windswept.  The plastic chairs in the garden are on their sides, catching water in their hollow legs ready to soak you when you try to upright them later.  Windchimes are clattering together - annoying the neighbours even more than usual.  You wonder whether you should bring them in before the winds tears at the cord that hangs them to the tree.

You sit in the kitchen - looking out at all that beauty - and the sun comes out again, casting warmth in through the window.  You smile.