It rained today. It poured. The wind blew; smoke from the burners by the river was pouring out horizontally. We got the full brunt, going over the Alex Fraser Bridge. By the time we got to IKEA, the parking lot was a puddle.
When we left, we got a boy from the service desk to help us load the car (a chest of drawers that I will have to put together tomorrow); by the time he was finished, the poor kid looked like a drowned rat. A cold drowned rat.
I sometimes think we humans are semi-aquatic. Water does us no damage, as long as we keep it out of our lungs. We love to look at it, paddle in it, play on it. Every day, by choice, we take off all our clothes and stand in it, singing, maybe.But we like it warm. Or hot. Not cold. Not soaking our clothes so that we shiver in the car all the way home.
Coming across the Richmond farmlands today, bumper-to-bumper with miserable, creeping traffic, we noticed a large flock of seagulls* in a soggy field. Some just standing in the water, most in the air, cavorting. A sizeable group wheeled in unison, making a pattern of white bodies/grey wings, obviously delighting in the wonderful wild wetness.
I envied them, from there in our finally-dry car with the heater blasting and the wipers click-clicking, with the damp umbrella and jackets spread on the back seat and the coffee cooling in its holder; I envied them their joy in the wind and the rain.
The photos are from a previous rainy afternoon, taken over a 1/2 hour period along the WhiteRock beach. It was pretty wet; Laurie took his photos holding the camera in one hand, the umbrella in the other. You can see round circles where the flash caught a falling raindrop.
The beach, of course, was almost deserted, except for one man who seemed to be collecting something in a pail, and the seagulls. It was still supposedly daylight, but the automatic lights over the pier were on.
They remind me -- strongly -- of my childhood on the We(s)t Coast of Vancouver Island, where it was an old cliché that we didn't tan, we rusted.
*Is it a "flock" of seagulls? Wikipedia gives me also a "colony of gulls", but I think that may refer to the breeding season. Their other suggestion, which I like and will use in future, is "a screech of gulls". Somebody got that right.
Ikea is a lovely spot to spend a rainy day. It looks like you share England's climate. The travel brochures never show pictures like yours, but the moisture keeps things nice and green.
ReplyDeleteCold and wet are the essence of misery, aren't they? Somehow, even if you have to shovel the driveway, snow is not as disheartening.
ReplyDeletebeing a PNW native we have 100 words for rain, eh? (like the eskimo's 100 words for snow, or that movie SMilla's Sense of Snow). Or how about, "when I was a kid I walked 2 miles to school in the constant, unceasing, wet pouring rain". Rain does drive the tourists away! AND I've always loved riding in the woods inthe rain--so peaceful, intimate, quiet, time-suspended-ness. Wear wool ;0)
ReplyDeleteRuth, "The travel brochures never show pictures like yours..."
ReplyDeleteNo, they don't. It would, as wyldthang said, "drive the tourists away!"
wyldthang, "AND I've always loved riding in the woods inthe rain--so peaceful, intimate, quiet, time-suspended-ness."
Agreed. As long as you're not in heavy traffic. The intimacy sort of gets watered down.
:)
Hi weeta, maybe I should have added "horse" to "riding" ;0) never was heavy traffic ;0) Good night!
ReplyDelete