The windows are open and white voile drapes - pulled across to shade the sun - billow and balloon in the breeze.
A black redstart is singing loudly, his call bouncing and echoing off the apartment blocks and office buildings, his own amphitheatre.
It has been a blazing hot, languid day; the kind where it's an effort to move, even from room to room.
But now there is a restlessness in the air, a tremor, a shifting of something. The sun is veiled in a grey/white haze and the air feels thick and humid.
Inside, listless on a couch, thinking about you. Splashy pale legs in a paddling pool; a clothes horse with bath-sheet towels thrown over it to shade you, brown patches on a lawn sucked dry by the conifers. A crumpled rug with toys on it, sun loungers, juice, tangerine segments, Blowers on the radio: '....and there's no run'. Wriggling toes, suncream, the hat that never stayed on, wrapping you dry, snug in the towels.
Our days in the sun.
Need to shake this off. I wander outside. Everywhere the skies are pale apart from on the southern horizon where purple, anvil clouds bloom and grow. The faintest rumble of thunder, a drum roll, a blink-and-you'd-miss-it flicker of sheet lightning.
Minutes pass.
Louder now and then forked lightning splits the sky and a crash of thunder shakes the building.
Huge heavy raindrops slowly plop on to the hot terrace, on to hot skin. Then faster and heavier. A sudden sharp gust sweeps down the street. You can smell the rain!
The skies are almost black now and street lights pop into life one after the other.
On the road below, people in shorts, sandals and flip flops dash for cover. Half a dozen cram into a doorway.
A woman grabs her sodden miniature terrier and drops him into her basket. A child screams and is dragged along by his mum, hair dripping and plastered to both their faces.
Drainpipes gush torrents on to roads and gardens, and flat roofs have become choppy lakes.
Now the thunder and lightning is constant and there is no counting the gap in between.
It's stifling hot here, seven floors up...but opening the windows brings the rain driving inside. A crazed mosquito flits and bangs against the glass as if trying to get out. One swat and it's done with.
I want to be outside.
Boots on, waterproof jacket fastened and then, hands on the biggest umbrella we have, I am out of the lift, walking through the foyer and out into the cloudburst.
The streets are running rivers; cars and buses have their headlights on full beam; the tree above me is full of roosting, honking drowned-rat Egyptian geese.
The rain falls so hard that drops ricochet hard off the tarmac, bouncing back up to soak legs from below.
Past the lakes where Canada geese and their goslings (less flighty, less hysterical than their Egyptian cousins) wait out the storm on land. There isn't a bird on the water. Place Flagey, a vast bare almost Soviet block-style square, pops and spits with the rain.
How you would have loved this! And in my minds eye you are next to me in mackintosh and wellingtons (very Christopher Robin!), stamping and splashing. I see you in wellies (yellowellies!*). And I remember you could never wear them...your plastic leg splints always too rigid to fit their mould. Your eyelashes are wet and you're laughing, striding out to keep up.
The bus is hot and sweaty, the windows are fogged and all of us steam as we sit or stand. A pair of young teenagers unprepared for the weather shriek as they leap off the bus and run for cover. There is a flash and the thunder cracks again. The woman next to me jumps with alarm, closes her eyes and mutters something under her breath.
The journey lasts about 15 minutes and still it pours. The sky is lightening though.
The Jardin du Botanique is deserted. As I knew it would be. One of my favourite places, right in the heart of the city.
The storm is moving on and while the rain still comes it is gentler here, less aggressive.Tree branches weighed down by the water bow low over the pathways.
I think of the last time I was out in a downpour like this, just for the fun of it: on a pebble beach on the isle of Mull, soaked, numb with cold, binoculars fogged up, watching a white-tailed eagle perched on a rock. I stayed there for hours, just watching. No-one around.
I love the sound of rain, I love being out in the rain. It forms a curtain around my umbrella and there is a slight tear in one part of it, right in the centre, and drops plop on to my head. The sandy paths are muddy rivers and I feel the water seeping into my boots. The air is fresh, clean and smells of lavender. And somehow, it is easier to breathe.
You can be sad and happy at the same Thomas. You can. And that's how it is, as I stroll through this park, the rain spattering, frittering the leaves. Happiest memories of the simplest pleasures...going out in a downpour, getting soaked, just so you could splash in a puddle....
xxxx
* 'Yellowwellies' - From the third stanza of 'First Day at School' by Roger McGough
I wish I could remember my name
Mummy said it would come in useful.
Like wellies. When there's puddles.
Yellowwellies. I wish she was here.
I think my name is sewn on somewhere
Perhaps the teacher will read it for me.Tea-cher. The one who makes the tea.
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| Stormy skies over Brussels |
