Still raining

It's April, we don't expect that it's going to be raining like this yet. I love the rain, even when I'm stuck in my office or trying to get from one place to another when it's pelting down. Rain can be very healing. There's nothing like curling up in your bed under a blankie with your book listening to the large drops hammer on the galvanised roof or watching through the windows as the run off streams down into the drains. It's almost soothing. As a child, playing in the rain was mandatory, as was the smacking you took for getting wet. But there's nothing like turning your face up to the dark sky and feeling each drop as it hits you, your clothes sticking to your skin, hair plastered but happy, happy, free.

August is one of the rainiest months here. In the pre two hundred odd cable channel, X-box, Internet days we craved things to do because we couldn't go outside. We learnt to bake cookies to ward off the insistent hunger caused by boredom; played Monopoly until someone got beat up for cheating. Can anyone remember Parcheesi? We honed our All fours and other card playing skills and generally drove each other nuts waiting for the rain to end to burst out to hop in the puddles and mud.

Rain is a familiar friend that drives away the burning heat of the dry season for the damp humidity of the wet. The flowers disappear but the lush foliage in every imaginable shade of green cloaks the hills, roadsides and gardens. The voluptuous fecundity caused by the heat with ripening fruit and overblown flowers is gone, replaced by the sensuous slide of droplets on skin, the promise of snuggling under the sheets or even singing in the rain.