Weather Thoughts

Last night we had the mother of all thunderstorms. I had just fallen asleep when a combination of Jason getting up and the noise of the storm woke me. I was too comfortable to get up and watch it, but lying in bed, listening to gallons of rain drumming on the roof while the sky lit up all around me was quite something. There was very little thunder, just the odd boom, but the lightning was intense. It just kept coming. It felt like being wrapped in successive sheets of light, the flashes were so close together. Jason went out to the stern, which is roofed in canvas and took it all in. He said the noise was so intense you could do nothing but be in it. There was no thinking, just marvelling.

The world was still being washed clean as I drifted back off to sleep.

This morning the marina is pewter flecked with shivers of silver as the water chops and settles, ruffled by the wind. Gulls wheel, dirty white and mewling against the grey of the sky. The towers of Canary Wharf rise above us like foreboding sentinels, all their summer shine washed off by the beating rain. High up, the sky reflects more sky in the squares of glass, a crazy paving of cloud all the way to infinity. Like Alice through the Looking Glass if she wore pinstriped suits and was heavily into spreadsheets. It’s another world up there.

On Saturday when the sun was shining, people loped along the towpath, oiled by sweat and sunshine. Movement was languid. People slid onto benches, stretched like cats. Clothing was a necessary annoyance clinging to bodies in the damp heat of an armpit or wound round a hot thigh. Skin twinned with warm air meant walking felt like swimming. Sweat beaded in the hair line, trickling its way down the scoop of a neck, the gully of a spine, pooling in dimples, reminding us how liquid we are.

Today, the weather is its own beast. Today we move out of its way. The damp wood of the pontoon suctions under foot. The wind knocks at the door and gusts off before we have time to answer. Movement is brisk and bodies are huddled. We put up barriers with coats and hoods, deep in the caves of ourselves, watching for a moment to duck out into the streets and do what we need to do. The wind taps at our backs, reminding us to hurry. Put the kettle on. Hunker down. Look out. Autumn is coming.