This morning my week started with a downpour that was almost torrential. It rained so hard that a small stream was flowing across a dip in the footbridge I take to get to work, and I had to pull my pants up above my ankles and accept the fact that my shoes and feet would be drenched. They were, and I sat at my desk for the first hour of work with no shoes on, drying out my feet.
But the rain and my sopping wet socks, somewhat strangely, made me smile. I don’t know whether it was bright yellow umbrella I bought recently, or the fact that the cement under my feet was so wet I could see my reflection in it. Or maybe it’s just because water falling from the sky has been a rare thing of late in Australia. But I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I lived in Melbourne, the rainy city, for four years, and now waterlogged shoes and pants that are wet from the thighs down remind me of how much I love that place. Nostalgia is a powerful and endlessly interesting (at least to me) thing.
Here‘s a link to a short piece of fiction I wrote on a similar theme.
Only a week until the first deadline!
