Wet Pavements

Image courtesy of Ethel & Bev

It's raining here.  The kind of rain that stops you from going outside, tempts you to cook whatever you have in the house (lump of tofu with barbecue sauce poured atop for me tonight), prompts you to look out the window at the people waiting for the bus and thank your lucky stars that you're tucked in here, makes you wonder if it will ever let up.  It's so encasing, so cozy, so intoxicating.  

Pavements here are wet most mornings.  It's a little noticed, taken-for-granted fact that we have never really talked about.  And I'll bet that if you don't live here, you didn't know that, did you?  It's not just in cooler seasons either; it happens in the dead of summer.  Does it always rain at night?  Is it dew?  Were they washed a short while ago?  Why are they always wet?  It's part of the mystique of the place, this old England.  It's part of her seemingly undying charm.

We're tucked in tonight.  It's raining and I'm still feeling a bit delicate after my flu-turned-cold-turned-migrane-turned-back-to-flu.  Steven's doing some homework with Calum in the living room and the sounds of rain and quiet instruction are so endearing.  I'm planning the day tomorrow: when the giblet stock has to be started, how often the turkey needs basting, how long the peas will take to heat up after the bird has vacated the oven.  It feels like home around these parts.