As someone born, raised and living most of his life in Germany, I was forced into the belief, 300 days of rain a year is normal. And why wouldn’t it? There had to be a reason for gigantic woods and lush green meadows. It also gave me an appreciation for the few days in a year, where the theoretical concept of sunshine became manifested reality.
Oh, imagine the ravaging lust, which overcame the hormone driven youth of German boys and girls, when the weather resembled something similar to warm and everybody threw their clothes off, meeting at the public swimming pools and lakes to shake off the sweat and get close to each other.
Unfortunately, most Germans out of their youth had to spend these days at work, where proper ventilation or temperature control was only a project planned for a future, when funding became sufficient.
Spain changed my life forever. Living eight months on the Canary Islands, we saw three days of rain. Later, in the South of Tenerife, it was only twelve drops.
And Valle Solo, in the heart of the Spanish desert near Granada was quite similar. Days, weeks, and months of sunshine were the norm. On rare occasions, sand blown from the African desert clouded the blue sky and turned Spain into a television version of Mexico. Calima winds caused the sepia filter and on bad days I could feel the sand grinding my teeth every time I walked the dogs.
It was surreal, a post apocalyptic sight when the fields were empty and people stayed inside with their windows closed. The rare ones walking outside had a purpose of getting fast from A to B, always wearing a cloth above their mouth and nose.
We didn’t care too much. For us, it was just another day in paradise.
Then the rain began.
For days sand littered the sky like a flying desert which suddenly met its arch enemy. Moisture. The sand, now too heavy to fly, fell prey to gravity and hurtled downwards onto the Earth.
Teodora and I were on the way to the supermarket. The air was thick and sultry, brown splashes of dirty water hit the windshield of our battered Citroen. They clung fervently to the car, to the street, to the trees and ground. On our way back, I opened the driver’s window for fresh air. The aerodynamics of French ingenuity swept a bucket load of mud onto my shirt and navy blue turned into drenched cocoa.
“You can survive a few minutes with air conditioning,” Teodora said, rolling her eyes. She knew I hated the dry ventilation, but I guessed she was right. She had a tendency for it.
I pushed the faded button for the electrical window to close. A whirring sound of turning wheels grinding through its gears, and a sharp crack sent a chill up my spine.
“Fuckety, fuckety fuck!” I said and parked the car on the sidewalk, lifting a few pedestrians off their feet.
I tried to lift the window up with my fingers. It didn’t budge. Stuck like a fat kid in a sewage pipe, the window hung suspended inside the door, while the wind increased its intensity into a storm with torrential rainfall.
“Why?” I cried out into the heavens and spat dirt. “Why now? Why not when the sun is shining?”
“What do you think will work better?” Teodora asked me with an inquisitive look.
“You fighting nature with bare hands or us bringing the car to a garage where they can fix the window?”
I thought about it. I saw life as a constant fight Man against God, because everything else wouldn’t be fair. And if someone could fight and win against an omnipotent being, it was clearly me! I tore my shirt off and banged my fist on the chest, roaring like a giant gorilla from a skyscraper.
“If God wants war, he can have it,” I yelled.
Teodora shook her head in exasperation.
“This was a rhetorical question.”
“Oh.”
After the garage fixed the window, the rain continued into the night and vanished like a ghost by the first sign of dawn.
With the sky washed clear of any signs of illegal immigrants, I stepped outside the house and sank into a puddle of mud.
The front yard, paved in bright and yellow quartz stones, was covered in a thick layer of brown goo. The house, only a year earlier painted white, dripped with sludge from every edge. The flowers hung their heads in mourning; the trees stood limp and sagging and the grass was speckled, too.
Everything was brown.
Entire villages, towns and cities sat covered in thick layers of dirt and pressure washers became a sudden luxury item. Cleaning services boomed and tank wagons with water drove from place to place to hose down house facades.
I’ve never seen something like this before and neither had anyone living here.
It was a dirty mess and took months for nature and people to recover from it.
Fortunately for us, our patrons didn’t use us as cheap labor to clean the outside of the house. They hired Caitlyn for it.
Sitting inside, trying to write a story, I heard for the first time her natural, deeper voice.
“Oh, bloody hell. This piece of rubbish–” Her voice cut off as the pressure washer started again.
I went outside to have a closer look. Messing up Caitlyn’s thoughts was my favourite hobby.
“Cut it off you little donkey,” it echoed through the backyard and the dogs started barking.
The pressure washer was hopelessly underpowered and Caitlyn struggled to clean anything from further than half a meter away. Even worse, the dogs had their fun trying to catch the water as it sprayed and making it near impossible for her to clean the wall.
“You could just smear some shit along the walls and let the dogs lick it clean,” I said, standing barefoot on a cleaned patch of stone, wriggling my toes.
“Oh you,” Caitlyn said, her voice a high pitch again. “As if the dogs weren’t enough.”
“I believe it’s the crown’s fault,” I said. Monarchy is a funny thing in Little Britain. They live in perverse wealth, outside the jurisdiction, and add a negative zero to the progress of any nation, but are still wildly popular and even considered a national treasure. Talking bad about the Queen is worse than mocking their football team.
“What’s the crown’s fault?” She asked, taking the bait with knitted eyebrows.
“The weather. Everywhere the Brits go, their weather follows. Instead of colonizing other countries, the Queen invades with the weather. She’s the 21st-century Bond villain.”
Caitlyn groaned and let out an exasperated sigh.
“James Bond 007 - The Rain of the Queen.”
She shook her head and started the pressure washer again.
”Look.” I pointed to a random patch on her opposite wall. “You missed a spot.”
She sputtered a few more friendly curses and tried to rinse my humor off with the pressure washer. The water never even touched my feet.