When the grey lifts, my spirits soar
IT was a long car journey and it was raining and I was in the back seat with a woman I was accompanying for business purposes, the details of which I now, praise be, forget.
She was nice enough but hardly sparkling and I for my part could think of a dozen other places I would rather be but, hey-ho, here we had to be and we had to talk about something.
So naturally it didn’t take long before we resorted to the weather.
She said something to the effect that we were a country cursed with rain and I pointed out cheerfully (for me) that if it wasn’t for the rain the countryside through which we were currently passing so damned slowly wouldn’t be so lush and green.
There was a silence, then she turned to me and said in a voice full of wonder: “My goodness, I’d never thought of it like that”.
I looked back at her with eyes that I could actually feel narrowing. But it was plain from her open face (coupled with her recent stunningly dull conversational history) that she didn’t have a sarcastic bone in her body.
Colour, beauty and moments that make your heart leap
In all her years (which were at least 20 more than mine) it had genuinely never occurred to her that there was a link between the number of words we have for rain and the number of shades of green that cover the ground.
To be fair, it can be easy to forget or just take for granted the upsides of a lifetime spent in the country that invented the word “dreich”.
And that was the thought that came back to me as I looked out of the window at one of last week’s downpours. So I dug out my photos of a visit to the Western Isles.
Heavy black clouds feature in many of the snapshots, but the reason I took them was that the sun had somehow found a way to sneak through the blackness, to light up the golden sand, turquoise sea and green machair and throw them into contrast with the surrounding dark hills and lowering clouds.
For a moment it is breathtaking. Then it rains again. That’s Scotland.
Colour, beauty and moments that make your heart leap, all drawn from a background of grey.
So bring on the sunshine and showers. And always bring a raincoat.