La sombrilla y el culo

Hay que existir una manera, un metodo mejor para llevar la sombrilla sin... pues... sin getting your arse completely soaked! Todavia la no encuentro, but one day it WILL BE MINE. Yesterday left work at the time necessary to catch the one bus that leaves every hour (around half past the hour), and within half a minute of the dry office the heavens opened and threw it down. And I don´t mean piddling rain like in the UK; not even like in New York. This was boulder sized drops, which I managed to get utterly drenched by. It was so bad that my poor trews were soaked up to the knees, which is my worst showing thus far. Yet the Ticos out in that weather didn´t seem to suffer so, wondering if it actually was that - and not the brolly featuring Stubbs´ horses from the National Gallery and the blondeness - that made me really appear to be a gringa. Also the fact that I had the paraguas tilted at just the wrong angle so my back was dry but my bum utterly wet. Oops. Must learn the tico style.

There is something so, so, so primordial and elemental about the release of a storm. It had been unbearably hot here yesterday - around 31C (that´s around 90F for you yanquis) but sticky sticky sticky. And the first drops of rain - maybe even the first fifteen-twenty minutes - were glorious. The evocation of the release of long-simmering sexual tension is obvious - crashing thunder, sparks of lightning, the cool and refreshing and calm feeling in the air as the humidity dissipates... I´m sure there was a DH Lawrence poem I liked about this sort of thing, but can´t find it over the Tinternet. Although it ended up being vaguely unsatisfying - the poem, that is. Poetry always does slightly disappoint me, feeling contrived. I must learn to read it better, although I do like Lorca. In the original Spanish, of course. Is that pretentious enough?

Anyway, another wobbly moment this morning, feeling... disjointed, lonely. However, yet again something or someone intervenes in my life and I realise how lucky I am. My boss here kicks arse, essentially - a tough, bright and principled woman who was kind enough to speak English to me at lunchtime and make me feel welcome and at home again.

I have also realised that Argentina will win the World Cup. Therefore no point sweating owt else. Torn as well - in Spanish and in American English, you´d say Argentina is going to win the Mundial, and I nearly wrote that before trying to equivocate by using the future form. Which is grammatically correct, but just feels wrong, particularly as it doesn´t take into account the spirit around the team, doesn´t include the plural which makes us feel part of a team... Still. Enough. Buen fin de semana a todos.