On Losing An Hour

Through pouring rain in South Liverpool today - faced with a long and low police car looming out of the murk - dreamlike in the extreme, like a peripheral witness to some major North American crime scene now swamped with inquisitive cops, driving slowly, partly to be safe and partly to snoop on everyone they see. The feeling passes quickly but the rain continues, meaning it as they say here, wipers on fast making not nearly enough space in the streams that speed like rapids down the windscreen. It is a long half-light, the enduring twilight of the temperate zones, leaving us dark at the start and just as dark at the end.

Earlier, son and I are in the Palm House - reaching it between showers but we are inside as the heaviest rain fills the park and overflows the lakes into the garbage-filled gutters. It smashes on the glass above us, threatening to bring it down on us. Of course over-engineering saves us again and we leave in a lull but are drenched before we reach the car. We go to friends to wait for the other half of the family - fun is had - train tracks are laid - carpets are concealed. The world is good and distant. Rain always makes me feel like this - it is a shield between me and the rest of space and time; it takes me back to my first day away from home, when it rained and Bristol did its best to break me up and spit me out but failed. Happier than ever am I when it rains. Let it rain forever and fill all the gullies. Let the sky never be blue again. I am hidden in the gap between the curtains and the window; there is no real view from here, just the rain and grey sky and lines of semis, with all the murky attempts at brightening these little boxes failing because it rains and rains. There is no point on bright paint over adobe walls because the rain spits up grit and soot and earth and all the walls turn to concrete. When it's raining it's too wet to fix them and when it's dry they're as good as any man's house.