Thanks to Jonathan for this week’s submission, sent earlier in the week. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
I’m sitting in an office block on the other Island, four stories up, watching the Wight fade in and out of sight as the rain throws itself down across the gap between my building and the next one.
Today’s rain variation is stair-rods. I don’t remember ever seeing rain that looks like stair-rods before, even though I’m old enough to remember stair-rods, and I can remember my mother saying – ‘It’s raining stair-rods’.
I can’t believe there’s anyone left nowadays who says that, or – ‘Dead as a doornail’. I suppose stair-rods and doornails were plentiful at one time. I wonder what the modern-day equivalents would be – ‘It’s raining emails’? ‘Dead as a phone with no signal’?
Japanese peasants
I’m now thinking that this rain is exactly like the rain depicted in my wonderful Hokusai print with the poor old Japanese peasants trudging across the wooden bridge in a downpour.
It’s also thundering, for the first time this year, at least in my notoriously-porous memory. Now I’m wondering if memories are like sponges, filling up with information and experience until they start leaking.
Where do memories leak to? When we forget things, are they lost completely, or have they just been covered up by something else, like the planning documents for the destruction of Arthur Dent’s house, lodged in his local planning office, on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of The Leopard”.
Eddies in the space-time continuum
And then I picture a broad river containing the entire sum of all human experience and knowledge, breaking its banks and flooding the whole landscape, and that reminds me of the internet, with me in a canoe navigating through the swirls and eddies of the dark water.
‘Eddies in the space-time continuum!’
‘For God’s sake get him out of there!’
The building I enter each working day has a flat roof and no gutters or drain pipes. I never normally think about these things, but this year’s incessant rain has made me think about it, mainly because of the sounds of cascading water I hear somewhere behind my desk. Being a bit of an amateur plumber, I find that my ears are very sensitive to the sound of cascading water inside buildings.
Plumbing is a real doddle
Plumbing is a real doddle. You turn off the water, empty all the pipes, and then you can do anything you like. Subject, of course, to all the regulations and requirements. That’s all very easy and logical.
Then there comes that moment when you have to turn on the water again, and there’s a result that’s beautifully digital. Either everything’s tight and dry, or it isn’t. You only find out by listening to pressurised mains water rushing to fill every space in the pipes and urgently seeking out gaps and cracks and loose connections so it can fill every space it can between floors and ceilings.
That happened once to me, and I’ve never lost that fear of turning the water on again. At the office it sounds like Niagara and I still leap up in a cold sweat, even though they’ve explained that the drain pipes are attached to the internal pillars and sealed behind walls.
Getting our summer back
And now the sun has come out and is shining on all the sparkling raindrops and puddles and the world looks like my car when it emerges from the car wash.
The weather this year is interesting. I seem to remember it’s always interesting, but I can’t remember all the previous times I’ve found that so. I can’t even remember what last summer was like.
A verry god plumber*
If I was religious I’d think that maybe this year God was doing some plumbing and forgot to tighten and check a couple of connections. When He’s sorted it out we’ll get our summer back.
Sometimes work can be a real struggle.
With thanks, as always, to the blessed Douglas Adams, who managed to write down at least part of what was happening inside his head.
(* this was the title of an actual advert I once read)
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
Image: Juan Beltran under CC BY 2.0
