It's raining, it's pouring...

It’s one of those well known facts – the kind you just know but are never sure if it’s true or not – that Eskimos have 50 words for snow. It seems a tad ridiculous at first but, if you think about it, when you have as much snow as Eskimos do it makes sense. I was listening to the radio the other day (5 live I believe) and they had a phone in about all the different words that we have for rain in this country and it’s all to do with the same mentality. We have so much of the damn stuff that simply calling it ‘rain’ won’t do. I had forgotten whilst I was away about all the kinds of rain. In Victoria (apart from in Melbourne which is well known to have at least 4 seasons in one day and its own bizarre weather patterns) in the summer it’s sunny and hot. Occasionally you get a torrential downpour with accompanying thunderstorm which drops its load rather spectacularly and then buggers off again but generally rain does not happen. In the winter it’s approximately the same, but colder. The wealth of words and euphemisms we have shows a language that is incredibly versatile, creative and, most of all, incredibly expressive in telling us just how bloody damp this country is. Think about it. You’ve got: Rain (obviously) Downpour Shower Light rain Heavy rain Driving rain Drenching rain Scotch mist Deluge Cloudburst Pouring down Tipping it down Raining cats and dogs Spitting Bucketing it down Pissing it down And, my favourite, the very British ‘drizzle’. There are types of rain that look like walls of water that drench you in seconds, the kind of rain that looks innocuous and really, really light but once you’ve been out there for a minute you look like you’ve just had a bath with all your clothes on. We have a permanent puddle out side the front of our house. I don’t think that there’s any time of the year when there isn’t water out there, although in varying degrees. It’s actually just had a remodelling because the oil tanker driver decided that he could fit down our drive – which he couldn’t – and that the only way to get back out was to do a 3 point turn in front of the house – which he eventually did although we couldn’t watch because the thought of him ending up in the pond was too much to bear – and drive back out forwards which he did with the help of a tractor in the end. This has rather substantially changed the puddle’s form. It’s made it bloody bigger for a start; the water now has a lovely change of scenery and gets to experience the ruts in the mud that the lorry left. I’m sure the water is happy, though I know mum really isn’t! There isn’t much of a point to this post, I just wish it wasn’t so overcast and would stop raining. And if you can think of any other words for that miserable phenomenon happening outside, I’d be glad to hear them, it will make swearing at the weather so much more enjoyable.