Lovely Rain

The other day I went for a long walk in the rain. This may seem ultimately pointless as you just end up soaked to the skin but I rather enjoyed it. I have always been surrounded by water, I lived by the sea for 10 years, and all it does in Cornwall is drizzle, shower and pour. My earliest memory is of being a toddler and falling into a pond. My mother was at a friend’s house looking at the flowers and having a natter so I wandered off. I saw the most amazing patch of ‘grass’ right in front of me. A thought went through my head “that grass would be great to walk on” so I headed towards it. I took my first step and splash! That was the first of many encounters with ponds during my years as a toddler.
As we get older the rain becomes so negative, it ruins days out, festivals, and any countless trips to the beach. However, for me when I was younger, the rain meant a trip to the Cinema or the Bowling Alley It may seem mundane now, but for me it meant hours of joy and wonder. At School it meant you could stay inside to play board games or run around like a loony.

Whenever I walk in the rain I always get one particular memory flashing back which makes me smile and laugh. The memory in question happened when I was in Primary School; I must have been about 7 or 8 years old. My friends and I left school to be greeted with the worst rain I’d ever seen, forget torrential, this was something else. On a main road there was an enormous puddle that was so big cars could not swerve to avoid splashing people without crashing into someone on the opposite side of the road. We saw this as a positive rather than a negative, an opportunity! We must have spent a good 45 minutes getting completely drenched by cars, Buses and Lorries. I remember how much we laughed when my friend took a whole puddle full in the face, and he wasn’t even part of the game! Needless to say when we got home we received a severe dressing down from out parents about our ruined, sopping wet uniform. This didn’t stop us from doing it again the next time it rained.