Sun and Hail

Weather's the main thing of course - far more than a background effect, it permeates our lives, inner and outer, making and breaking our moods and our days. And we've been having a lot of it lately, with a spell of bitter cold, relentless leaden skies and peculiarly unpleasant forms of rain and sleet. So my spirits lifted when this morning brought blue skies and sunshine - a cold morning under blue skies is a very different proposition from a similarly cold one that is dank and grey and crushing. At lunchtime I sat by my favourite mimosa tree - yes, it's that time of year again - with the sun now intermittent but, when it was out, blazing straight into my face (where it was more than welcome). I was about to return reluctantly to work when it burst through brilliantly - and at the same time there came a heavy fall of hail. It was a strange magical effect, as if I was somehow making my own weather, like a room around me. The sky, I now saw, was a mix of brilliant sunlit blue and blur-edged clouds of intense black - an extraordinary and, as it turned out, short-lived effect. The hail passed. There was no rainbow, but I returned to work with my heart that little lighter.