This post could have been just like so many others.
It could have been, I went to town at lunchtime and bought a few bits. I could have continued, I parked the car in the supermarket car park at the bottom end of town, I walked up past the bus station, I wandered through Marks and Spencer, up through the shopping centre, across the front of the Borough Market, past the coffee shops, the bookies, the charity shops, the camera shop, the pubs, the banks and the building society. I walked back down the hill through the arcade, past the fishmongers, along by the pound shop, past Tescos, Boots and WH Smith. Along the way I bought a few bits and pieces and when I'd finished I retured to the car, drove home, all was well and nothing happened.
As I say, just like so many other threads, and I find them good to read, because it was through reading posts like this that I got the courage to break the door down and head out into the big wide world.
However,
This post has a slightly different ending, because this time,
Something did happen.
Something that hasn't happened before.
A new experience, something that I hadn't known before.
You see, today, here, in this dull, grey corner of the world, it's raining. It actually raining quite steadily and has been raining for some hours. All morniing in fact. Since before first light.
There are small streams running down the gullies at the edge of the pavements, there are puddles everhwere, all is grey, and despite the Christmas lights doing their best, and shining as brightly as they can, they too seem to have admitted defeat and there is an air or gloom about the place. The cloud is sitting on the tops of the hills which gives the town centre an enclosed and claustrophic feel.
And this is what was different, this was the new experience, the rain. I was out in the rain. Not warm summer rain, but bleak , northern, winter rain, the kind of rain that gives rise to the saying "It's grim oop north".
I knew when I set out on this phase of my journey through life I would have to go out in the rain which is why I bought my coat, my scarf, my gloves, my umbrealla and my ankle boots. I can wrap myslef up against the rain, I can stay warm and dry. And yet, bits of me got wet.
Yes, wet in the rain!!
And you know what?!! It's the utter ordinariness, the utter banality of that satement, the very essence of just absolute nothingness which is what makes me smile about it so very much.
Yes, that's it, that's the point of this post: I went out in the rain and some of me got a bit wet, but with appropriate clothing I was able to stay warm and dry. And you know what, for someone that spent 50 years safely tucked up, in the warm behind closed and bolted doors, being out in the rain today was an utter joy
Originally Posted by alwayshave
