Barefoot in the rain

I just went walking barefoot in the rain.

Lightning was striking the hills in the distance. Their sloping shoulders, usually so close and clear, were wrapped in grey, luminous mists. Not the dark, dangerous clouds of a summer storm, but that highly-charged, backlit wonder of an early thunder storm.

The thunder was a ripping sound, not a rumble. A stretching, tearing, up-in-the-morning-and-taking-on-the-day roar. Big fat drops of warm rain beat down the newly planted aquilegias and lupins in the garden, and kept the bemused cats indoors. The road was a river. The sky was the colour of old tarmac.

Under my feet the road was smooth, washed clean, faintly warm. The water running over my feet was somehow a taste, not a touch. Sweet, delicious. Smooth.

The tang in the air, the drops striking my head – harder and slower under the great incongruous limes down the road – the washing of my feet, all of it was poignantly perfect.

I remember distinctly the last time I laughed, barefoot, under the arch of a thunderous sky. I was nineteen, slightly drunk, and in the company of friends. We sat in the gutter-streams outside a pub in a little village in Essex called Writtle, and screamed when the lightning struck the houses round the green.

There’s some sort of connection established, in the link between the water running through you hair, the taste of it invading your mouth, the feel of it dripping from your fingers, sliding over your feet. Water is life, after all, and life, like water, is a cycle.

I love walking barefoot in a thunderstorm. But I haven’t done it in twelve years.

What was I thinking?

The sun just came out. The birds are singing.

(I make no apologies for waxing lyrical)