Since then I seem to remember April Showers always making an appearance on my birthday and it being decidedly grey and rainy most of the years. Now I LOVE a good summer thunderstorm. I love the smell of rain on hot ground. I think it's a lovely way to spend an evening watching an electric storm when your wrapped up inside a duvet and all safe inside, but it's not fun when it's your birthday and you want to go out and the rain just encourages people to stay in.
On birthdays at the Nakuru Baby Orphnage in Kenya, the children traditionally get 'washed'. This is a cleansing of the past year and a fresh start to the new year. I've never been visiting when it is one of the
children's birthdays, but I've heard that they are more of a full on water fight rather than a simple 'cleanse'.
(check out www.missioninaction.com.au)
Although I seemed to have always picked rainy seasons to go to Kenya, a lot of the year it is really warm and dry and so the rain can be really welcomed.
So maybe that's what's happening to me in the UK? The weather is inadvertently cleansing me from the things I've been up to in the past year and then giving me a start for the next year.
I've been lucky enough to be in some exciting places for my birthdays, never through my exact birthday planning, more making general plans which happen to fall over my birthdays.
My 16th birthday happened to fall on the same day as a trip to Alton Towers, which was fantastically fun, and the first time I'd ever been...but of course it rained...a lot!
And I don't think any of my friends will let me forget my 18th birthday when I dragged about 12 of my friends down to Ilfracombe to go camping and it rained almost the entire time! And camping in the rain is just never as much fun as in perfect sunshine.
Then my 19th birthday was spent in Rotorua in New Zealand and was fantastically fun. We went to a smelly sulphur thermal spa and boiled ourselves, and then partied in a ridiculously empty pub/bar until we ended up in a campervan with some boys we'd met....so no rain this year! The first since my 1st birthday I think which was very exciting! It meant me and Lizzy could wander home in our flipflops at silly o'clock in the morning, only to find that our pillows had gone missing (they'd been hidden in the fridge and after a warm, drunk evening theres nothing better than a chilled pillow!).
(worlds worst timer photo!!)
My 24th was spent in Panama, where you were sweating just lying in bed and not even doing anything. After a day of yoga, zumba, Spanish lessons and making fresh pineapple, coconut and rum cocktails, we headed over to one of the islands which has a club on it set out over the water on some decking. When we got too hot and sweaty from dancing, with the free drinks for ladies, you could climb up onto a platform and jump into a whole cut into the decking, so kind of like a swimming pool in the sea! I suppose it had the same effect of being very refreshing and cleansing, but it also was really exciting.
(too sweaty!)
With April this year being incredibly hot (I was paddling in the sea last weekend) I was wondering if and when the weather would break to bring my traditional birthday rain. Although at lunchtime it clouded over very heavily and looked as if we could have a summer shower, but it held and we spent a lovely evening on the Southbank, (where there is a beach) with cocktails and dinner sitting outside - Perfect.
So, maybe my spell of birthday rain is coming to an end. I'm guessing it's down to global warming and less rain in general, rather than the idea that maybe I've been more well behaved in recent years and so need less cleansing.....
No comments:
Post a Comment