The Art of Raining

Filellinon street

It has been raining all day, sometimes heavily, sometimes relaxing a little, but never stopping. The Corfiotes walk around as normal, most holding umbrellas aloft, but they never seem to hurry to get out of the rain. Mostly they seem to have a rather bemused attitude towards this wet stuff pouring from the heavens. VreHi I learned today [it's raining] from the people who have the shop just underneath my balcony. Yesterday the man was wearing a woolly hat – kani krio he said and I repeated it dutifully – it's cold. The flashing temperature up in platia san rocco says 10 degrees – surely it cannot get any colder than that. I don't know if there is still snow on the mountains of Albania as I haven't yet been to the waterfront to find out. The constant rain means it's the perfect day for getting on with some work, so I have set myself a number of pages to translate, since a long walk is out of the question. I have also found a variant on the route home, which involves turning off Georgiou Theotoki earlier, and following Paleologou, turning up Nikiforou Theotoki and turning left from there, eventually going past the Metropolis Cathedral and on up to the well of Kremasti that way.

The rain makes sharp loud intermittent dripping sounds on something plastic on next door's balcony, pours out in splashing sounds from an overflowing pipe somewhere close by and makes a regular light drumming on everything else – paving stones, rooftops, plastic sheeting, car roofs. Ah, since when was rain so fascinating? The uneven marble flagstones in the alleyways catch and retain various levels of water and sometimes it streams like a near-silent river but it does not seem to dampen the spirits of any of us.