Storms

My home as a child was the end shop in a terrace of five. 

We didn't have much of a garden at the back of the house, and it was an annual excitement when my Dad decided the time had come to ready the hanging baskets.

My Dad would probably have enjoyed gardening if he had had more time and two arms, but as he had little of the former and only one of the latter, the hanging baskets were the farthest reach of his green(ish) fingers.

The baskets hung at either side of the shop door, and were on pulleys so that they could be lowered for watering. They were richly colourful and seemed special and exotic to me at the time.

Childhood memories often seem to be of endless sunny days: playing out until someone ran out of patience and came to call you in. There were plenty of summer days for me, but I remember storms better than happy days of sharp-shadowed mischief.

We lived half way down a very long hill, on a road that ran along its contours. When it rained, water heading downhill took a break on our road, and raged along the gutter, trying to find the way down. To a child, the speed and suddenness of our river was always impressive, along with its equally rapid disappearance and the pavements gently steaming.

In summer, the shop door was always open, and when there was heavy rain my Dad would stand in the doorway, resting his right shoulder on the jamb, stretching out his left arm to the left jamb, and crossing his ankles. It was a really characteristic pose, and in my mind's eye I can see him now so clearly. He's be wearing his usual ill-fitting Blanchard's jacket, a flat cap on his head and a cigarette danging from his lips.

In the space beneath his outstretched arm I would stand and we would watch the storm. With luck there might be lightning, but the big attraction was the rain. We did not talk, but watched the river rise and fall, smelled the fragrance of the baskets, sometimes counting the gap between the lightning and the thunder to figure out how far away the storm was, and which way it was moving.

I loved those storms, and love them still. I stand in my doorway and watch them roll across the fields, count the gap, gasp at the stabs of light. Though my father is long, long gone I am always somehow right back under his outstretched arm, waiting for the scent of warm wet earth.