Wetness

For a few months now I've noticed an odd feature of the weather locally. In the rainy season, which now seems to be a year-round phenomenon, you can generally expect rain in the late afternoon, I suppose as the humidity has built up during the day. (I know this is terribly vague, if not downright incorrect, but I've never claimed to be a meteorologist.) However, Fridays seem to be an exception to this pattern in that the rain regularly strikes around 12.30. How do I know this? This is the time I go to the mosque for prayers.

Now going to prayers might sound a straightforward sort of thing to do but, believe me, it often involves strategic thinking of a high order. Where do I park to be close enough to avoid a major trek, yet ensure a reasonably quick getaway in order to get back to work? Will I get a parking ticket if I'm on double yellow lines for forty-five minutes? Where can I put my slippers in order to be able to retrieve them in reasonable time? What time must I leave for prayers in order to comfortably get a place in the mosque?

So when it's raining, and raining hard, a whole new set of considerations arise to haunt one. If you have an umbrella (because it looked like rain) where can the umbrella be put on the way in? Is it likely to 'disappear' if the rain persists? If you don't have an umbrella, as I didn't today because it actually didn't look at all like rain only five minutes before the heavens opened, how wet are you going to get legging it across the car park to whatever cover exists on the way in? Will you be too wet to actually pray? And what about at the end of prayers? Is there going to be any chance of getting back to work without being drenched?

The joy in the middle of all this is to be in your place, with nowhere to go except where you are, with nothing to do except what there is to do, and nobody to answer to, except the only one ever really worth answering to in anything at all. The desert spring. Something blooming.