Brolly

Brollies are wonderful symbolic and poetic images of rain, but what the hell are they for in reality?

We were awoken early by rain being blown hard against the window panes, so I was raring to get out there for my walk to the Nature Park. But then the brollies, people wearing hoods, using their brollies to ...what? Protect their raincoats? People doing battle with the wind, fighting to keep their brollies from blowing inside out. Small people now transformed into wide vehicles, taking up the whole pavement, unable to see. They'd poke your eye out as soon as look at you.
Bloody things.

At the Nature Park, uncertainty over whether we would be able to take children out on the trails for fear of falling branches. But we did. The wind had been blowing all night, most of the leaves had now fallen from the trees and anything that was coming down had long since done so. But the frogs didn't pop their heads out to see us, we found spiders but no webs. I found one, single, tiny, forgotten millipede, deep down below a log, buried beneath the decomposing leaves.

At the end of the programme we lost power. On the main roads, the traffic lights were out, so endless beeping of car horns as drivers disagreed with other drivers' decisions about whose turn it was to move forward. We cancelled the afternoon session, but the teacher was about to cancel anyway, one mum with an SUV, presumably the real point of which is to be able to drive in these conditions, was refusing to drive. Schade.