Walking in the Rain

The trouble with glasses is they are so bad in the rain.

Tonight’s rain was that fine rain that speckles and spritzes against your face. Fine - so it’s a form of moisturiser for the skin except moisturiser is better.

Here’s the problem though - you may need specs to see - but in the rain they cloud over and (far from helping) they dim your vision.

I’m a fundraiser for Amnesty and that means I’m a streetwalker – not a hooker you understand - but I still walk the streets. I knock on doors and raise funds.

So I set out tonight knowing I’d get wet. It rains - you get wet.

It helps to do my job with a light heart and a smile on my face. I’m friendly – but when it rains like this, supporters don’t want to come to the door. I guess they don’t want to get wet either.
Tonight the streets and the pavements had that sheen – they were slick with moisture.
The night had gathered early and spread a cloak of darkness before its proper time. A gloomy Hitchcock film noir kind of darkness.

There’s rain and then there’s rain. As I grew up I was told that the Eskimos, now called the Inuit, have a zillion words for snow but we just call rain “rain.” Actually we also call rain by storm and drizzle and mist and showers. But I don’t have the language to describe this fine misty drizzle that permeates and wets everything. A constant, unremitting sadness that falls softly from the sky and makes London such a dark and shiny place.

This rain isn’t isolated or local or patchy or scattered or sporadic. It isn’t a shower (anyway what is a shower – when it rains it rains. If you are in a shower it’s raining.) No this is consistent.
As I walked I could feel and smell the rain and see the haloes of light around the streetlights. A fizzing of the light around the bulbs – some yellow some white. I could also hear the difference the rain made deadening the traffic noises like a blanket of calm.

The rain has its own beauty but unsurprisingly tonight’s walk and tonight’s fundraising were not a great success.