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A rainy night – and why the dodo went extinct

20 June 2020 by Simon Barnes 2 Comments

June 17

I had spent rather too long working out exactly what I would say to a rather oppressive editor in the next email. It was a useless exercise anyway; it was half-past three at night. 

But when I eventually got to sleep I dreamed that a horse I was leading got away from me and leapt into the first floor of a Regency town house. For a while I existed in the strange ecotone that lies between dreaming and waking, wondering if my insurance with the British Horse Society would cover the expense of demolishing the house to release the horse.

I was a little more awake now, conscious of a strange noise. Then I was quite a bit more awake and knew it was rain: persistent and soaking: a pleasant a sound to hear in a water-tight bedroom.

Sun plus water equals life. It’s sometimes hard to remember this. We give most of the credit to the sun in England, where the season of growth coincides with the return of the sun. In Zambia, it’s the other way round: growth comes when the sun at last goes behind the clouds and the rains arrive.

Round here we have, until last week, been having lovely weather, otherwise known as drought. This nocturnal drenching was giving life back to parched land: from my bed I could almost hear the earth slurping. The tired earth, my tired brain, both being soothed.

I listened to the rain. I ceased to think about the editor who had inserted into my copy the surprising fact that dodos were seabirds (no wonder they went extinct). I ceased to ponder the actuarial consequences of horses in first-floor drawing-rooms. I felt my vexed mind slowly easing.

Refreshed. Washed clean. The land, the waterways, the plants, the soon-to-be-sleeper. Rain, more rain. 

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Posted in Wildblog

Comments

  1. Diane says

    21 June 2020 at 9:20 am

    Dont let the beeb beeb grind you down….

    Reply
  2. Brian Goldfarb says

    28 June 2020 at 10:21 pm

    Well, around here, in London, we welcomed the very long run of rainless days to allow us oldies (without “underlying health issues”) to get out for our daily exercise walk during the hardest of the lockdown to one of the four “woods” (more like parks with rather a lot of trees – except for one which is a real wood), with occasional excursions to the slightly more distant Hampstead Heath. This latter at least allowed us to see more of our beloved birds cavorting on the Ponds on the western side of the Heath.

    Did your thoughts allow you to wreak an adequate revenge on the annoying editor?

    Reply

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