Rain (The Beatles)

As a student on a small campus, I walk to get just about everywhere. Perhaps that's why the rain has generally become more of an annoyance than something to be enjoyed...especially as I generally go sans umbrella, wellies, or raincoat. It's ridiculous, I know, but every time I go out to buy wellies, in particular, I always manage to convince myself that I can wait until later, and so the cycle of procrastination goes on in its unending unproductive round. My real shoes, then, are resigned to a shorter life-span thanks to the soaking they get as I dodge puddles (not always successfully) on my way to class. On these occasions - my Imperial hoodie dutifully shielding my nicely straightened hair from the onslaught of the rain - I always remind myself that next time I ought to just suck it up and pay for the wellies when I find them in the store.

Actually, I've just reminded myself for no good reason of the old Beatrix Potter story, The Tale of Two Bad Mice. Where Tom Thumb and his wife Hunca Munca wander into the doll house in search of food and find out to their dismay that none of it is real. So, indignant at the apparent deception, they set about trashing the house to teach those dolls not to fool unsuspecting little mice with their painted plastic food. The point of this aside was that a line from the story sprung to mind when I was considering that my unwillingness to part with my money, even for a semi-necessity like wellies, was what left me with wet shoes every time it rains. The line that remembered from the story was when the lovely Miss Potter informed us that "Hunca Munca had a frugal mind..." I couldn't remember any more of the story than that, and so it was off to inquire of Google like Dorothy to the Magnificent Oz. However, Google, unlike Oz, was quite oblidging and answered my query at the second go-round.
That obligatory 19th-century French-novelist-style tangent finished I must return to the subject at hand: the rain. I'm supposed to be inside revising today (with an exam tomorrow perhaps I ought to get on that sooner rather than later...) and so it doesn't bother me in the slightest that it's cool and rainy outside. In fact, for once, far from bothering me, it's quite soothing. The sky isn't dark enough to be a pewter grey - the kind you get with roiling angry thunderclouds - but it's a washed-out silver...almost white. The rain is just heavy enough not to be a drizzle, which really means that it's light enough to walk through without getting completely soaked, but heavy enough that it isn't simply an irritant. It's the kind of day that my mother would advocate as one on which to stay indoors and watch old movies.

Of course, the best sort of rain is the sort which comes complete with thunder and lightning. A proper summer thunderstorm with raindrops the size of marbles where you can run outside and look like you've jumped in a pool in a matter of minutes. I'm convinced that's an activity you can never grow out of.

Though, for the moment, without any childlike frolicking through the rain, I think returning to revision is imperative. The sundry distractions of the internet will have to wait until I've spent some good time comitting myself to remembering the details of the Six-day War and the 1979 Revolution.