Water torture

Chinese water torture, we were told in my youth. A figure, shackled into total immobility, with a single drip of water falling endlessly onto his forehead, until he breaks. Or goes mad. Or both.

It is strange. I do, in fact, love water. I lingered in my shower this morning, as I do often, letting the hot water beat onto my back. An easing of discomfort. I often think, in my cliched fashion of "the benison of hot water". Which I had always thought was a quote from Gerard Manley Hopkins, but I now find, courtesy of the internet, is Rupert Brooke.

I love the sea, passionately. I get to it not anywhere near as often as I would like. I photograph it when I do.



By this particular beach there is a cottage, almost on the very shore. I would live there, if I could.

Then there are rivers. Crimsworth Dean Beck, that runs a few yards in front of this cottage, sings us to sleep most nights, even when sunk low in its own rocky bed. It meets Hebden Water only a few yards further on, and continues over the weir.



I even can find affection for rain like this at times. Not often; the circumstances contribute, I suppose.



If I turned my camera on my own windows now, it would look something like that. A different kettle, and the fish would love it, no doubt. I do not. Neither do many others. Town today was deserted, nearly, and those who where venturing out all talked about the same thing. The incessant rain, and fears about the state of the river - the same one that passes us up here, but in the valley, with all the collected water and no deep rocky bed to pass safely through.

I turn to the internet for rain poems, and find page after page of entries, people pouring out their thoughts along with the rain. Grey, grey, grey, rain, rain, rain, help, help, help. I found a blog entry, dated this time last year, from a woman in Finland, bemoaning the endless days of low grey skies and continual rain, the lack of bright blues and crisp, white frost. At least we have had a very few of those. I think........

That's it. I at least can stop - now.

I'll tell you when the rain does.