It's raining

It's raining.

It's raining so hard that as I look out of the window the pounding of the droplets against the slanting roof beneath is throwing up a steely-grey mist.  The mist hovers gently for a fraction of a second before being swept away into nothingness.

I've sat down to write this and as I type the rain has stopped.  In the calm some birds have taken up tweeting gently.

When it started I went outside in the driving rain to retrieve a hallmark of civilisation, washing on the line.  As I stumbled around throwing pegs, socks and undergarments into a basket the rain caught on my hair, bare arms, my eyelashes.  As I stumbled around a girl two houses down the row had also dashed outside.

She looked up and smiled broadly at me "Stupid rain!"

I grinned over the walls and fences "It wouldn't be Sheffield otherwise".

What a mundane thing to say but the beaming smile as rain cascaded down our faces made it seem like the wisest of observations.

When I come back inside I remember what I always think of rain when I'm inside - 'It's only water; it's hardly toxic; I'm not going to melt'.  As soon as I get outside all of that vanishes and I dash around like someone in the sky has turned on me with a machine gun.

It's started raining again.