What’s not to love about the rain? Add a good raincoat, a sturdy brolly, decent gumboots and no puddle is too large. There are just some kinds of rainfall that simply invite us to step out and revel in the water that falls from the sky.
There is even a name for the lovely smell of rain on very dry ground - it’s called petrichor, describing a chemical called Geosmin that is emitted by microbes in the soil.
Before I learned to love the rain though, I once got stranded in a terrible downpour while waiting for a bus in another country. There was no bus shelter, I didn’t have a phone and it was just me and the rain, for over an hour.
At first the waiting wasn’t bad, the skies were clear and it was a quiet green walled neighbourhood with ornate gates and mute letterboxes... But the moments ticked on and on, and it started to rain in big thick pelting droplets. After feeling sorry myself for a little, I started singing to the raindrops, trying to ignore the drips as they seeped through my denim jacket. I sung my way through all the rain songs I could think of before a bus finally pulled up to the rescue. Raindrops are a very tolerant audience, and they don’t judge your timing or delivery, so it was an experience that I’ve never forgotten.
