Reflections on Rain and Tin Roofs

Raindrops on my umbrella in Barcelona, waiting for the Tour de France to roll into town...
Reflections off rain pooling in sidewalk holes, while I sat out a rainstorm at a cafe in Paris...

These days I am frequently waiting for a Millenium line train at the Commercial station and, oddly, when it is raining, I don't really mind it. That's because you can really hear the rain falling there. I even took this little video clip [bottom of post] this morning when I thought about this (ironically, played back you can barely hear the rain over the background noise, but it means something to me;-).

While I know it's not the same thing, it sounds a little like the sound of rain on a tent, when you are tucked inside... It's been a long time since I camped - maybe 20 years - and I feel no pull to do it now (much less in the rain), but it's still a sound that somehow comforts me. I guess it's a childhood thing. Not only did we go on a lot of camping trips, often we'd set up a tent in the backyard in the summer for kids sleepovers. It's a feeling I had again as a young adult, when my boyfriend and I would 'camp' by sleeping on a foamy in the back of his old Dodge van, even the time when we got stuck in mud and ended up sleeping on an uncomfortable slant all night... the sounds of the rain on the tin roof lulled me to sleep.

Speaking of tin roofs, I once had an opportunity to live for a year or so in an old restored heritage house in Victoria with a tin roof. I had the suite in what used to be the attic, so I was the one who got the benefit of hearing the rain on the tin roof. When this 1910 house was restored, the guy who owned it was actually able to find an aging fellow who had worked on tin roofs when they were a standard construction method. The old 'widow's walk' around the perimiter was restored too. Three big skylights were cut into the ceiling of my suite, so the rain sounded as good on them, as on the tin roof itself. It was a neat place, with a stained glass window at the bottom of the stairs, and up top the suite was on about 5 different levels - there was even a teensy balcony with an ocean view if you stood up - but perfect for nude sunbathing lying down. While not the kind of girl who'd like to live in the woods, I loved lazy Sundays when I'd be tucked inside, listening to the rain, and roasting in the warmth of the wood stove. Everything was new in the apartment, so there was electrical heat, but I'd gotten a half a cord of wood, or something, and I'd fire the wood stove up for atmosphere. This was also the same place where they guy wondered how I'd gotten the oven so clean when I moved out... and he couldn't believe it when I told him I'd never used it. It was still brand spanking new. Heh. Not much has changed on that front.