MAROONED IN A MONSOON

We had rain the other night in Haddington, such rain as you never see outside of Mumbai. Around eight ‘o’ clock in the evening, the sky began to grow very dark indeed. A huge black cloud gathered in intensity and settled lower and lower over the town. The temperature began to rise as the humidity increased. You could feel little droplets of moisture on your face, even though it wasn’t yet raining. There was not a breath of wind, nor indeed did there seem to be any air. There was complete silence. Even the screeching swifts were cowering away, not daring to hawk for insects on a night so terrible as this. All of a sudden, the sky was rent by a bolt of lightning that seemed to smack onto the very pavement across the cul-de-sac, and an Ypres-scale explosion of thunder shook the house to its very foundations. The house lights flickered, dimmed and, thankfully, recovered. Then another flash, another explosion. The old dog and two cats cowered in the middle of the living-room floor, scarcely comprehending what was going on. The final lightning bolt hurled itself almost horizontally across the sky, then the electricity failed and the lights went out. Blundering around in the near-dark, I found some night-lights and matches and the candles cast a feeble but eerie glow on our frightened faces. For a minute or two nothing happened. The thunder and lightning ceased. The street was dead quiet. The rain started with a ‘whoosh’, rather than a patter, and it was as if a water-cannon had been deployed. The rain by-passed the gutters and simply hosed down straight onto the ground. Within minutes, there was a small stream running down the street. My house is built on a slight fore-and-aft slope, and the camber of the drive is such that running water of this type makes its way straight for my garage, which, for some quirkish architectural reason, is below the level of the drive. I do what I always do in times like this – I dashed out in a baseball cap, grabbed a yard broom and started sweeping the torrents of water up the gradient of the drive and out into the street, where the water could run away to safety. Within twenty seconds I was soaked to the skin, blinded by the volume of water pouring off my hair and brow into my eyes, and for every gallon of water I was sweeping away, two more were galloping down the drive and swilling about my feet. For forty minutes I fought an heroic battle against the elements. At one point, when the broom handle snapped, I thought my leg had gone. I tossed the useless brush away, sought a plastic replacement from the back shed and carried on. Finally, just as it looked as if I was going to lose the war, the rain eased and the torrent died down to a trickle. I swept away the surplus overspill, just as the electricity was being restored and everything was returning to what passes for normality around here. My wife returned an hour later from visiting my son in Newtongrange. “Have you had any rain? – we haven’t had a drop.” “Not much,” I said “It’s been boring, as usual, around here.”