Rain

I know we've not had the drought in this part of the world that other places further east or south have experienced, but it's been dry, you know - I've got used to going out in a shirt, maybe a jacket - but not a waterproof. Today, however, the streets were wet, the cloud down, and a strong east wind blew and made blustery noises under the bedroom windows. Autumn has asserted itself.

This being the case (the Latin "quae cum ita sint" pops up in my memory) I decided a little domesticity wouldn't go wrong and spent some time making Greek beans - you know, the kind you get in a taverna at lunchtime, with tomatoes, and perhaps carrot, celery, onions, garlic, herbs and gigantes plaki with that wonderful Greek oregano ... Maybe I was trying to banish the grey dampness outside, but whatever it was there is now a large dish of this reposing in the fridge for a couple of lunches. 

I was rescued, however, by a text from my bestie. She was having to come into town: would I like a walk in the rain in the afternoon? So I fished out my cagoule (the leaky one that is so much more comfortable next to bare arms than its much more waterproof successor) and my heavy duty trainers and off we went, up to leave her car at the church and then on to walk round the former two reservoirs in the Bishop's Glen, with their memories of brambling while leaving my #1 son perched in his buggy at the top of the bank. (If I'd fallen in to the reservoir that is now no longer there, who would have known he was there?) We talked non-stop and agreed that it was good to be alive - always with the slight sense of the unspoken "still" in the sentiment. We came back via the churchyard, where we stopped to admire the recently-cut grass. The photo was taken not, as you might think, to underline our musings on mortality, but rather to record the fact that in the 48 years I've known this graveyard I've never noticed that the black cross in the foreground appears to be in the middle of a plot rather than at the head of it like the others. I have to confess I did think of Doctor Who's weeping angels ...

Now the rain is falling in audible torrents outside my window, and I must banish all thoughts of moving stone angels and prepare for bed.