Precipitate

Oh, this mizzle. The wettest kind of rain. Or as my mum calls it, ‘horrible fine’. It’s one of more than 100 varieties in Britain.

How well we know a dibble of slow rain, or the dash from a sudden bleeter. I remember the Lake District’s heavy stotting rain, the yal watter. In Sussex we have scud, which is both driving rain and mist.

Pfft. This everyday rain is turning my mood swashy and sodden, dabbled and reeky. I'm at risk of becoming a fair weather pluviophile, though I know rain is a wonder.

Take this raindrop.

This raindrop has fallen through the air for up to seven minutes, assuming the shape of a jellybean. It has been cloud (nimbostratus), it was ocean (Atlantic), and rain again and again.

This raindrop is an odyssey. It has travelled hundreds perhaps thousands of miles. Precipitation, evaporation, condensation, precipitation - wait - this word has many meanings. Precipitate is making something happen.

Hush. The rain is whispering onomatopoeias. They calm, focus, make us more creative.

Breathe. A scent not dusty old petrichor, but well washed.

Can rainy days help us accept what we can’t control? Maybe I’ll let them.

'Look at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body falling loose, shaking free of the world of reality.'

Haruki Murakami

and the soft rain—

imagine! imagine!

the wild and wondrous journeys

still to be ours

Mary Oliver

Image: Ryoji Iwata