Grebe

It has been a rainy day. Not one of those with unbroken glowering clouds and constant precipitation from dawn to dusk, but the sort where you have sunny blue skies and fluffy white cumulus to lure you outside, only for a thunderstorm to appear out of nowhere and drench you before you can find the slightest scrap of cover. I had got as far as packing the bicycle in the back of the car, and driving north to what should have been sunnier climes, when the skies started to turn bleak. So I went for a short walk around the ominously named Black Lake, with an umbrella for company, in the hope that things would brighten up.

The lake is not as dismal as it sounds, although, to be fair, it is somewhat downbeat as lakes go. Not much happens there, apart from the odd water bird bobbing placidly about. And a sign about water voles, which I didn't get to see, so I have to take it on trust that there were actually there. But as I strolled, the occasional raindrop turned into a sudden thundery downpour. I took shelter under my umbrella, and, in an effort to avoid any stray drops, under a tree; although admittedly I started to wonder about the advisability of standing under a tree in a thunderstorm. But then, were I to wander around in the open, would the lightning bolts decide that my umbrella was highest point to aim for? Sometimes you just cannot win.

As it was, I survived unscathed. There was something quite moving about standing in the pouring rain, watching the ducks getting wet on the lake. We don't seem to do much standing about in the rain nowadays, waiting for it to stop: either we don't venture out to begin with, or we just continue our journey regardless. We don't have the time to watch and wait. I remember as a child this seemed much more common: you would hang around in shop doorways, or even in the doorway of someone's house, to watch the rain coming down. In those days you didn't have a car parked around the corner to jump into. And bus-stops didn't have shelters. But you had the time to watch the rain coming down.