addicted to rain

It failed to rain today. The weather forecast promised heavy, no torrential, rain, and all day the sky looked heavy and soggy and rain seemed imminent, but not a drop fell. I'm slightly disappointed.

I've probably mentioned before that I find the sound of rainfall very soothing. One of the great pleasures of our stay in St. Andrews was the moderately heavy rain that fell on several evenings. We were staying in a 'lodge' at a caravan park. To all intents and purposes it was a static caravan though it was a bit wider and it felt more like a small house than a big caravan, but the roof was also the ceiling if you follow me, so when the rain was drumming on the roof it was immediately above us. As well as that we could have the window fairly wide open at night which we can't at home for fear the cats will try to jump out. All this meant that when the rain was falling I could lie in bed and really listen to it - all very relaxing if you're a weirdo like me.

It occurred to me a few weeks ago to wonder why I like the rain so much - yes, it's a soothing sound and there's that amazing fresh smell in the air during and after rainfall, but could it be I've lived in the wet west of Scotland too long and I've developed a weird form of Stockholm syndrome? Well there's an unnerving thought!  Eventually I came to the more reassuring  conclusion that growing up on the windswept coast I rarely knew vertical rain, or for that matter rain when it wasn't also cold and miserable, so summer downpours are probably still incredibly exotic to me. The most vivid memory I have of a horribly jet-lagged stopover in Singapore is a half-day trip over the bridge to Johore Bahru in Malaysia and a visit to a mosque on top of a hill and a batik workshop in the middle of a thunderstorm and properly equatorial heavy showers - that's properly exotic. Summer rain in mainland Scotland can come a good second though.

So where was my torrential rain today then? Oh well, it meant the Boy got to commune with the trampoline.

Edited to add: I had just posted this when my meteorologically-minded cousin posted an amusing and very appropriate Daily Mash link on Facebook.