Thunderbolts and lightning

It’s been kind of hot and clammy down by my way for a couple of days.

That kind of completely ridiculous weather that makes all your clothes stick and makes everything seem lazy and syrupy and just plain uncomfortable.

So last night when I went to bed around one in the morning, as habit dictates, I lay there pondering the inscrutable fact that the pillow wasn’t even cooler on the adverse side and figured it was all a toss up as to whether or not I would ever get to sleep when an flash illumined my humble abode in a way that can best be said to be slightly disturbing – if it hadn’t been for the severe rumble of thunder that followed.

There was thunder.
There was lightning.
There was rain – and a lot of it.

So, there I am at one thirty in the morning, toes wet from the rain, wondering if my neighbours would find it very disturbing if I climbed down off my balcony to the tiny strip of green grass outside and stood there naked for a while as the show played out.

They probably would have.

Anyway – it was the kind of thunderstorm that comes as a sigh of relief and the kind of thunder that rattles the windows.

And for a few moments there life didn’t suck at all.

ROL

City rat

I’m a city rat.

How do I know this? Apart from the obvious, that is?

It’s been raining really hard the last couple of days. I mean the kind of big, heavy no-nonsense rain you get when autumn rolls around. Leaves are falling, clogging up the drains. I’m wearing two layers and still getting soaked. Damn, even my socks are wet. Time to pull the big boots out of the closet and shine them, I guess.

Falling leaves clog the drains. I was waiting for the light to turn green and saw the bus coming ‘round the corner. There were a couple of incidental pedestrians waiting along side me and I looked them over out of the corner of my eye, because that’s what a city rat does. Ladies in heels and skirts. As the bus pulled closer I took three steps back. Recoil street water is not a good thing. It’s probably on my top ten of things I don’t want down my sneakers.

Just as you might easily predict the bus hit the … puddle, for lack of a better word, with stuff in it (quite possibly dog stuff) and my fellow green-light waiters let out matching squeals that would have delighted a minor director of cheap horror movies. Scream queens in the making. I didn’t snigger. Honestly I didn’t.

That’s how you know you’re a city rat. Constantly swivelling your head and twitching your moist rat nose you know there’s more to making it home in one piece than just stopping at the red light. You’ve got to watch the clouds, and the bus and the gutter water too.

ROL

Plan Ahead, Children…

It’s raining.

No, really. It’s raining.

I mean serious head-for-the-rafts rain.

I now have the opportunity to make an interesting observation. I was chatting casually to some people at work today who were looking unusually despondent. “Why the long faces?” They were going to a wedding.

That didn’t seem like the thing you should look like a kicked puppy for.

It was an outdoor wedding. And the wedding party didn’t have a Plan B. You should always have a Plan B. An escape hatch, at least. A tent. Something.

I am not a likely candidate for getting married. Partly because I am a horrible pair of old cynicky-boots and partly because no-one will have me. But it’s mostly the boots thing.

If, and that’s a big fucking If, mind you, I was going to get married I would certainly not go in for any of that new-age hippie pagan-vegan crap. There will be no reciting of poetry under the canopy or listening to the gulls at the beach while someone plays the panpipes. We’ll go Old School. Only way to do it really. Otherwise what’s the point? You’re going to wake up with “Property Of …” tattooed on your ass anyway. Might as well do it in front of God and sundry.

Anyway – I check the forecast. It is grim. It says rain, rain, rain and more rain for the next twenty-four. Cold, wet and windy.

That wedding is going to suck out loud.

Which brings me to the interesting observation. I have some friends and acquaintances who have gotten married (and yes, there were some pagans) and they seems to plan a whole hell of a lot for the wedding, but spare not one thought for the actual marriage as such. I mean you should at least let your thoughts glance off the idea of what your life will become afterwards. Ricocheted reflection if nothing else.

And that’s why I will probably never go there. I always see the potential for failure, to coin a phrase. I just thought that was an interesting observation… in an observationally interesting kind of way.

ROL