Carpe Diem

A phrase so oft used, particularly by middle aged men, so as to render it more crape than anything else! Never truer than when you want to write about something, even more poignantly so, if the words 'memory', 'sieve', 'like', are oft used in your presence. You might retort saying, "Where there is a will, there is a way....". I might say, "And where there is a will, there is a won't!"
I'd wanted to write about the unholy hand rubbing glee of waking up to a rain day holiday! Except it was snow! It sent me straight back to the Cuffe Parade that was before the roads were paved with concrete.... usually in mid July, sometimes mid August. The morning where you wake up to the report that none of the school buses have been sighted leaving the grounds..... the stealthily ticking clock, the 'ting tong' of 0830 on the radio right after the exhortation to buy lakhani chappals, as you wait with baited breath to confirm whether it's just a delay... .....or YAY!!! A Rainday holiday. You can never count on it, but when it does happen, it's such an incredible sense of excitement and adventure. An arm flinging, world embracing anticipation that is a sudden bonus, day of nothingness. Of rubber chappals, old shorts, ineffectual wind cheaters, and optimistically decorative umbrellas, gusts of teeth chatteringly cold wind, sloshing through thigh high walls of water, chasing each other, battling relacitrant umbrellas and each other, shrieking at the joy of being alive, curiously unmindful of the gutter gunk that's mingling with the new rain, swirling along your skin, like little animals let loose in the wild. Fabulous!
The same rain, the same filth, the same streets... but the delight that can only be brought about by the unexpected. A rain day holiday..... or sometimes, unexpected snow.....