The Ramblers Association

I love the rain. I may have told you before. Today was light when I left the house but it was a dark-blue-grey light from a sky intermittently throwing down showers and drizzle. I love the rain – I love being just out of the rain – I love walking in the rain and I love coming home from walking in the rain. Most of all I love the subdued light of early spring rain. The children seem to have inherited some of this and will sit with me on the doorstep during thunderstorms though youngest will get bored when restrained from throwing things down the back of the telly for more than a few minutes. My daughter however, seems to be able to stand in her window looking out over the wet back gardens for ages.

I used to live in a remote house on the edge of some common land which only had a dirt track connecting it to any main roads. The view from the front was off grass and weeping willows with the dusty/muddy track snaking across the little valley of the stream which ran across from the hills down to the river. Rainy days were great; the clouds would roll down off the hills like pastels being smudged over the picture until all you could just about see the trees on the edge on the next field. I can still hear the rain on my waterproofs as I walk across the common to get the bus. We always fantasise about getting enough money to make the current occupants of the house an offer they can’t refuse though they have made some ‘improvements’ to the house – like putting stairs up to the room on the end of the house. Part of the joy of having the play room was that the door was on the end wall but on the first floor. We had a ladder to get up to it and no other way in – a sort of safe tree house – not that it stopped us making real tree houses. Very cool inside – it had a huge Bulgarian propaganda poster which I had brought back from a skiing trip though I am not sure how unintentionally cool sit actually was. My dad was quite worried about it I’m sure but he never said anything. I suppose he realised that art had got the better of politics. There was an old record player with Horror movie themes – Jaws – Three Days of the Condor – The Exorcist, TV themes – Colditz – Black Beauty – Nationwide and an obligatory stereo demonstration record which we thought was great even though the record player was glorious mono – an old tin box as Mike Oldfield would have it. We are all cloth-eared nincompoops!

That Cloud Looks Like A Small Dachshund Called Colin

As you have probably worked out, this entry has been written in two parts. I was unable to post this morning and rather than make two posts, I am just carrying on. The sad news I have discovered between then and now is that Mr. Ivor Cutler has died. and mention of it in the office has revealed the additional news of the demise of John Junkin as well. They both had parts in Beatles films. Now my wife finds Ivor Cutler very strange but I’ve always quite liked the strange poems with their deadpan delivery. Strangely I am thinking of The Third Policeman as well. Like dreams you may have without them making you feel either uplifted or depressed, which is most of them for me I suppose.

The shuffle threw up two Japanese tracks in a row yesterday – something by Pizzicato Five and then the Japanese version of Blue Monday by The Times. Then the search I was doing for something regarding c#, threw up page after page of Japanese sites which had me wondering about some sort of conspiracy. Of course this is not synchronicity is it – just some random probability that does this. We all like patterns which is why kids will look for pictures in the clouds. Not just kids – I still do it and of course Kate Bush does. This is why I was struck by the strange similarity between someone’s aftershave and the almondy smell of Macaroons this morning. I have always thought that a certain level of decomposition produces the smell of almonds but I am loath to go and search to see if that is the case. (pause for a furtive bit of Googling). It is indeed true but these days we must also be aware that it is also the smell of cyanide gas. I should read all those Agatha Christie books.
Apparently in the living, the same smell can indicate liver problems – should I tell this person?

I think that is enough – I have no direction today.