Rain Dance

The weather tonight was perfect for our walk, it had been raining all day and it decided to stop, well almost, for our half hour walk. It was like being back in Britain, back to those miserable days when the light rain would eventually soak you to the skin, grey skies and the exotic scent of dampness, bronchitis and dysentry.

The memories of youth with wet Crosville buses full of drenched smokers with steaming anoraks and parkas, the happy feeling of finally being in a mostly dry vehicle with that warming second hand smoke filtering through your nostrils and the thought of mum cooking liver and onions for tea and perhaps a slice of apple pie and a cuppa to wash it all down.

The rain became such a part of my early life that I enjoy the stuff, I stroll through the car park while other people run, I love mornings when it has rained overnight, the feeling of life and the freshness of the air, a long way from those smoke filled Crosvilles.

There is no real negative to rain, and a lot of very good memories can be had in those bygone rainy days.

The early trips to Butlins when the weather wouldn't always cooperate and we'd all have to go indoors for plan B and maybe stuff matchboxes or watch the redcoats performing or presenting our fathers with their trousers rolled up for the knobbly knees competition.

The afternoons spent sat in the back of the Vauxhall Victor estate with our I-Spy books or magnetic disguise kits, the rain pattering on the roof while thermos flasks of hot tea filled the car with steam and spoilt our view of the seaside.

In my teens, I cycled with my brothers road club on a Sunday, and it probably rained, we'd cycle across the bridges of the Mersey and end up at Two Mills for a pint cup of tea and the best beans on toast on the planet. Then on to Colwyn bay and more rain, more tea, probably more beans and then a long cycle back. The exhausted, soaked David being helped along on the way home by his older brothers mates (seldom by his older brother who was always at the front of the pack).

Happy times.