Grey Skies
It's raining, it's pouring,
The old man is snoring.
He bumped his head, and went to bed,
and couldn't get up 'till the morning.
Do you know this old English kids song? I don't
remember when I first heard it, although I suppose I must have been
very young. People from England are of course very familiar with
rain, and some of them joke about the length of the rainy season in
that country ... 12 months! But as I left England when I was only
five years old, I don't remember much about such things. I spent the
next ten years living on the Canadian prairies, where there really
isn't any such thing as a 'rainy season'. There are plenty of
thunderstorms during the summer, and lots of snow in the winter, but
I don't remember ever having an umbrella ...
When our family next moved to the west coast of
Canada, to Vancouver, I became much more familiar with rain. Although
the Vancouver winter is very mild indeed, with not much snow at all,
it can be very wet. Nobody can live there without using an umbrella!
The grey days pass by endlessly, one after the other ...
Here in Japan the entire national mood seems to
change when the weatherman tells us that the rainy season has
officially started. Mold grows on the walls, our bedding becomes
stale and stuffy because there are so few chances to air it out, and
sometimes it even seems to be raining indoors! But after some weeks
have passed, just when you think you can't stand any more, the
weatherman then brings the news that "The rainy season ended
yesterday ...."
Of course, that doesn't mean it stops raining,
only that the rainy season has ended. We still have to keep an
umbrella close at hand, and will need to do so right up until the
blue autumn skies appear. But children in England know an easy way to
make it stop ...
"Rain, rain, go away ... Come again
some other day ..."