5 things i remember when it rains

1. Japanese Gardens. When it rains at the gardens, the sky shines silver. It is appropriate for mood. The air is crisp and the pine trees look softer than they actually are. When you sneak through them you are treated to a tinkling of fresh water and are stung with bunches of needles. The result is refreshment. You can take cover in the red-roofed shelter overlooking the organised paths and pond if you like. But sometimes couples are sitting there, too. And that might make you uncomfortable.

2. Nakedness. This memory is hazy. I see bricks and the maroon concrete path that runs along the side of the house, into the yard and up to the clothesline. I see a gray fog, probably related to the rain. I am five. Maybe younger. There is a boy from the flats next door. He used to roam the streets with a remote control car. He is naked. And so am I. We are running on the maroon path and on the grass. Around the house we go, we go. It rains and rains. Later, I think, there is trouble and yelling and lots of sitting in my room.

3. The Falls Festival: The Grates. I purchased a raincoat because I wanted to be prepared. So I thought I was prepared, but when it rained I was not. I’ve never understood why my raincoat lacked a hood.

4. Boy from Brazil calling for his mother. We are camping in Austria. By now, we should be experts at establishing our tents, pulling those guy ropes nice and tight. But alas, we are not. We are tired and lazy and only there for one night. We say goodnight and sleep as rain begins to fall. Its pitter patter on our tent is pleasant, like the sound of your dog making his way across the floor boards to paw at your knees. At one point, I think that this is exactly the reason I came overseas. Then, the thunder. The sky cracks and it pours. We hear a zip outside our tent and a yelp. We unzip our tent too and look out. The boy from Brazil is calling for his mummy. We laugh. We hoot. Before realising that our own fly is wet and flat against our tent. That the water is rapidly dripping in on one side. We pile our suitcases in the middle of the tent. We must protect our souvenirs. I think we lie pushed against one another, but I really do not know. I can just feel that our pillows are sopping wet. Our sleeping bags are sopping wet. And when we wake in the morning, we will be sopping wet.

5. The Gabba. As the rain fell gently upon my besotted face I watched number 15 play his game, which he did very well as you’d no less expect, and when I arrived home that night I looked up the Brisbane Lions website to find out his name. I then wrote him a song on my trumpet, which I recorded and sent to him in the post. He didn’t write back. That was the first time I had my heart broken. But that is mostly a lie.

The real story is that Michael took me to the football and it poured:


But that is mostly a lie too.