WEATHER

WEATHER

Today, being optimistic, I set off for my dog walk with my long grey cashmere coat on. We have a tradition that every Christmas Wendy buys me a second hand winter coat.

While Dash was barking his recognition at the narrow road down to Ardmore and I was noting the windsurfers vans, out because of the wild ness of the day; I could also see over towards Roseneath and Gourock, the dark blur of what I hoped wasn’t rain.

Out of the car trying to fit into my welly boots, the first drops started to fall. Walking through the puddles the rain created a circular glaze on the muddy surface. By the time I was down to the cattle field, I was not soaked but running my fingers over my coat and the bits of jumper still sticking out, left a distinctly watery feel. The mud was squelchy; Dash slightly greyhound like with his flattened hair; the sea; an old and dull silver with streaks of white from the wind.

I stopped the walk early; went shopping, came home and listened to the radio while Wendy and Charlotte watched the Wizard of Oz. I had retired happily hurt at their shocked indignation that I didn’t know the story line or the names of the characters.

Now lying on the sofa bed, if I look up through the window, I can see blue sky and small fast moving clouds.

Last night the rain was torrential, not that I really heard it, but when I went upstairs in the morning to see Wendy and Charlotte, they were lying the opposite way round to normal; mainly because, in the middle of last night’s downpour, the water started dripping onto their heads from the edge of their velux window.

I love the weather; maybe in coming years with the wilder gales I will come to hate it but just now I love it. If you asked me to go out in a storm of rain and wind I wouldn’t but if I did because Dash needed his walk and I came back soaked to the skin with my hair like rats tails across my head, it would feel wonderful.

There is something amazing about the force of the wind rattling your coat and the coldness of it on your face, the drip and film of rainwater on your skin it wakes you up, makes life the sort where you want to shout in the wind with the thrill of it.

At this time of year I can only just imagine the feel of a soft breeze with the gorse buds snapping in the heat. Bees have to buzz on these days and the sea needs to lap gently, lulling you into a dream of summer and sky larks. Ideally, I would be lying back in the grass to watch the sky way, way, up above. To be honest it is a long time since I have lain back, relaxed on grassland. I am too frightened of ticks and Lymes disease and with today’s storms there is always room for the doomed talk of global warming.

Earlier in the week I wiped snow off the car windows and in the morning we skidded and yelped our way in the snowy slushy mixture to school and I cancelled my trip across Argyll.

Those days where the weather was the weather, just weather; sometimes frightening, sometimes the very stuff of holiday dreams but just something that happens.

I miss that innocence where opening the curtains is not accompanied by thoughts of what the children will be living through in thirty, forty years time.

I prefer, though I know I shouldn’t, the simpler things: Dash wandering round the house staring at the outside world, wondering if there are any cats to bark at. The rattle of the tarpaulin on our mended wall. The fact that, with a few eyelets placed just so, the rabbits now have four times the space to run in than they did before. James playing on his Xbox. The film we will all watch this evening.

But Wendy has come home just as the latest squall has arrived. The trees are roaring in the wind, there are hailstones on the windows, the blue has gone to be replaced by dark grey. It is sometimes just too much to simply ignore.

(photos Ardmore and Cardross Feb 2022)